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She certainly was not one of them. When Renee Zellweger signed on to play a certain plump London singleton in Bridget Jones's Diary, U.K. residents flew into a collective snit. A Texan as Bridget? Vulgar. ''It upset them,'' reasons author Helen Fielding. ''It was sweet that the whole British nation was up in arms about their Bridget being an American.''

Zellweger, however, would remain the token outsider in an utterly British production packed with a posse of friends and friends-of-friends -- forming a twisty genealogy of publishing and film royalty. As BJD director Sharon Maguire notes: ''It's a small town.''

Think of it, to begin, as When Helen Met Sharon....A decade before the April 13 screen debut of BJD, a mutual friend took Fielding (then a restaurant critic) and Maguire (then a BBC director) on a theater outing. Fans of Jones's cocktail-sauced world will be shocked to hear that a shameless amount of tippling did not ensue. ''It wasn't a drunken [night] because, incredibly, at that time I didn't drink,'' remembers Maguire. ''But we bonded in the way that you do when you're out there behaving like 15-year-olds. We were at a crossroads with careers or relationships while a lot of our friends were settled.''

That sentiment found a voice when Fielding, under the Jones pseudonym, started tapping out her column at London's Independent. The daffy stories were thick with the ignominies of the single, thirtysomething working girl -- with Bridget's mouthy friend Shazzer bearing a strong resemblance to Maguire.

In 1995, the friends fell victim to an epidemic bringing Britain to a halt: the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, featuring Colin Firth as Jane Austen's smug, dashing, confounding Mr. Darcy. ''There's one scene with Colin in britches and a wet shirt -- so sexy! -- that was on the front of all the newspapers in England,'' says Maguire. ''Helen particularly and hilariously was obsessed with Mr. Darcy, as if he was a real person roaming out there somewhere.''

So bewitched was Fielding that when Bridget Jones's Diary was published in 1996, Ms. Jones's love interest was none other than the smug, dashing, confounding Mark Darcy. And when buzz began about turning the must-read into a film, Firth was a natural. ''Helen had been saying publicly I'd be her choice for Darcy,'' says Firth, who first met Fielding through their mutual friend, novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity). ''We came across each other at a party; she asked if I minded her saying that. I said not at all. A friend told me later she'd taken that to mean I was keeping myself free for the next five years.''

Good thing, because it would take nearly that long to transfer BJD to celluloid, courtesy of Working Title Films, producers of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. Both of those witty Brit comedies were written by Richard Curtis -- who would help script Bridget. It was another natural selection, as Fielding and Curtis have been best of chums since their Oxford days. ''I remember Helly appearing in a play dressed as Marlene Dietrich,'' Curtis says. ''Her German accent wasn't very convincing, but she seemed to look nice.''


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