Helen Fielding

English writer Helen Fielding is the author of the novel Bridget Jones's Diary, a late 1990s U.K. and U.S. sensation that ushered in a new wave of "chick lit" novels and spawned two movies starring Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant. Fielding studied English at Oxford and worked in television before writing her first novel, Cause Celeb (1994). After its publication she worked as a freelance journalist until landing a regular column in The Independent and, later, the Daily Telegraph (1995-96). For her column she created "Bridget Jones," a sarcastic, 30-something Londoner worried about her career, her tobacco and alcohol intake, her love life and the size of her behind. Fielding took the popular column, added a plot taken from Jane Austen and made a novel. A modest success in the U.K., the very-English Bridget Jones's Diary became a huge hit after its 1998 U.S. release. Fielding has since published a sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999), and another novel, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination (2004).