Helen Fielding

| birth_place = Morley, England | occupation = Journalist, novelist, screenwriter | language = | nationality = British | ethnicity = | citizenship = | education = St Anne's College, Oxford | alma_mater = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = | partner = Kevin Curran (died 2016) | children = 2 | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | website = | portaldisp = }}

Helen Fielding (born 19 February 1958) is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s ''Independent'' newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels and four movies.

Fielding credits the success of Bridget Jones to tapping into the gap between how we all feel we are expected to be and how we really are.

Fielding’s novel ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' (1996) became a surprise global bestseller, published in over 40 countries. Fielding continued to chronicle Bridget’s life in the novels ''Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'' (1999), ''Bridget Jones’s Baby: the Diaries'' (2017) and ''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' (2013) all of which became international bestsellers. In a survey conducted by ''The Guardian'', ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century. In 2024, the ''New York Times'' named ''Bridget Jones’s Diary'' as one of the twenty two funniest novels since ''Catch 22''.

The movies chronicling these adventures - ''Bridget Jones’s Diary'', ''Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'', ''Bridget Jones’s Baby'' and ''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' (2025) - were all successful commercially.

In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Fielding was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. In December 2016, the BBC's ''Woman's Hour'' included Bridget Jones as one of the seven women who had most influenced British female culture over the last seven decades. Bridget was the only fictional woman included. Provided by Wikipedia