Renee Zellweger says she has ‘a lot of Bridget Jones’s worst traits in me’

Renee Zellweger has spoken out about how her life has resembled the Bridget Jones character she has played on the big screen.

It has been nearly 20 years since Helen Fielding’s fictional unlucky in love and life character was first portrayed on film by the now 51-year-old Hollywood actress.

Renee has now said that her life has followed a similar pattern to Bridget’s with the character’s worst flaws and situations being played out in real-life for Renee.

Speaking in a new TV show that is celebrating the character, Renee has said that she feels lucky to have portrayed Bridget on screen but a bit perturbed about her similarities to the character’s life.

Renee has suffered heartbreaking relationship break ups including a marriage that lasted just five months when she tied the knot with country singer Kenny Chesney in 2005.

Renee said: “All the things that you would most like not to have in common with Bridget are the things that I find I relate to most closely.

“I’ve had moments when I feel like I’m sitting beside myself watching my Bridget alter ego just spiralling, circling the drain.”

Bridget Jones’s Diary was released as a novel in 1996 and the best-selling book was adapted for a movie in 2001, with Renee taking on the hopeless romantic.

BBC2 are marking 25 years since the character first appeared in a newspaper column written by Helen Fielding, with a documentary titled Being Bridget Jones.

The programme, which airs next week, will look at what inspired the character and how Helen’s experiences of being raised in Leeds before heading to Oxford University helped.

The now 62-year-old author admits she spent much of her twenties in party mode before finding she was living the life of a “singleton” through her thirties.

Helen finally found her love in life when she met Kevin Curran in 2000, the year Bridget Jones’s Diary was being adapted into a film.

He was a writer and executive producer on TV’s The Simpsons, and they had two children, son Dash in 2004 and daughter Romy in 2006.

Tragically, Kevin died from cancer in 2016, aged 59.

In the documentary, Renee says she has sympathy with women who feel they have the pressure to combine look and feel a certain way before finding a man and starting a family.

Renee said: “Ridiculous things, like how much we weigh or what we look like in a dress or our hair or whether or not we’ve achieved this list of things that others value by the time we’re 30 or 40 or 50.

“She struggles with it and she tries and she fails, like all of us. What it boils down to in the end is self acceptance.

“I think it’s appreciating that being imperfect is what you’re supposed to be.”