I am Bridget Jones.
My face was on the column and it mirrored my life...
 then I grew up, stopped dieting and smoking
and found my perfect man.

 

By Jane Ridley, The Mirror

FOR millions, Susannah Lewis is THE face of Bridget Jones. She posed as the career girl silhouetted on the cover of the best-seller, staring enigmatically out of the window, cigarette in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

Her chiselled profile is recognised across the globe after appearing on the jacket of Bridget Jones's Diary, which sold four million copies worldwide.

Blonde actress Renee Zellweger is the new Bridget as she stars in the eagerly-awaited film - premiered in London this week - but purists will always associate their neurotic heroine with Susannah, a petite brunette.

The Mirror tracked down the former newspaper secretary to Madrid and found she is enjoying the kind of lifestyle which Bridget could only describe as v.v.g.

In fact, the 33-year-old singleton whose angst has struck a chord with both men and women would be in a state of bliss to find herself in Susannah's kitten heels.

In an exclusive interview, Susannah admits she used to be "more Bridget Jones than Bridget Jones". She whinged about her figure, felt unappreciated at work and drifted into unsuitable relationships until, like Bridget with her beloved Mark Darcy, she found Mr Right.

She is happily married to a handsome younger man, has a job in the Spanish media, a chic apartment and is all set to a start a family.

"If the fictional Bridget could see me now, I'd like to think she would stop worrying about her own destiny," laughs Susannah, 38, flicking a dark curl of hair away from her hazel eyes. "I used to be similar to her in so many ways, but I've grown up.

"Yes, I had all those girly concerns about my weight, how much I smoked and the rate my body clock was ticking. Who doesn't? In fact, there is a little bit of Bridget Jones in every woman when she is feeling low and negative about herself.

"Bridget doesn't realise what delightful qualities she has. She's a gutsy, highly intelligent woman. If she gets real and seizes the opportunities which come her way, she'll move on. There's something very sweet about her, but there comes a time when she will have to take charge and get serious.

BRIDGET should ignore all those fears that society doesn't like over-confident women. She thinks she will be brash and unattractive to men, and that's holding her back.

"I came to Spain without any money, without speaking the language, and I survived to make a success out of my life. Just as I did, Bridget needs to take chances."

Six years ago, Susannah was a personal assistant at The Independent in London when the editor asked her to pose for a photograph for a column written by journalist Helen Fielding under the pseudonym Bridget Jones.

He wanted a postage-stamp-sized picture to appear next to the piece, representing a sassy young woman who liked a drink and a cigarette. His eyes settled on Susannah. Something of a sex symbol among the middle-aged male journalists, she was wearing a stylish black jacket and white shirt.

"I could have been on an early lunch and he'd have asked someone else because the office was full of glamorous, thirtysomething women with the right kind of look," says Susannah.

"But I agreed because I thought it would be a laugh. I never imagined that a simple head shot of me would cause so much fuss.""

She posed in a champagne bar near the paper's offices in Canary Wharf. "I had to buy my own glass of wine, which was a bit of a cheek," says Susannah. She has since been paid just pounds 500 by publishers Picador, who used her image on the first Bridget Jones book and its sequel, The Edge Of Reason, which sold 400,000 copies in Britain alone.

She remembers: "At one stage I was trying to balance my glass of wine, a fag, a lipstick and a compact mirror.

"But we decided that was too fussy. No woman would be that paranoid to do all those things at once. The editor assured me it would be a silhouette and nobody would recognise me. But, of course, they did.""

Sure enough, Susannah was the target of office jokes as colleagues gleefully compared her lifestyle to that of the hapless Bridget. She lived alone in a small South London flat, and, although she didn't keep a diary, she regaled them with stories of disastrous romantic encounters. Her 13-year live-in relationship with an older man - her maths tutor before university - had broken up and she was enjoying a new freedom.

"Up until then, I'd only ever slept with one man," she says. "People assumed I was getting up to all sorts of things, but they'd have been disappointed if they'd known the truth. Throughout my twenties, I'd been living almost like a housewife, and now I was discovering myself.

"I took up salsa dancing. I'd work all day, then go to a dance class at 7pm and not get home till 5am.""

She was known as a die-hard party animal, living up to the image when she persuaded a senior executive on the paper to salsa with her on a bar-room table. And she confesses that, in true Bridget fashion, she had a crush on the chief reporter, timing her trips to the canteen so she could share the same lift.

BUT invariably he'd be collared by someone and my attempts would be thwarted," she says. "I'd have to wander nonchalantly back to my desk, pretending I'd forgotten something."

In common with Bridget, she smoked 20 cigarettes a day, drank chardonnay and worried about her weight, starving before dates and making endless resolutions to go to the gym.

"I didn't count every single calorie, but I was the sort who'd try every new diet going,"" says Susannah, who is 5ft 5in and small-boned. "I was always hovering over the 9st mark, and, of course, I wanted to be under it.

"I had some scary big pants which Bridget would be proud of. Real passion-killers. I was enjoying myself, but I'd have moments when I'd think: 'Why am I single? Is there something wrong with me?' People were getting married off and I'd be wondering who I'd be going on holiday with, what I'd be doing at Christmas and next Valentine's Day."

She had her own version of Bridget's confidantes Jude and Shazzer in Serena and Brian - who, like Tom in the Diary, was gay. She says: "They were a wonderful support team. We had endless commiseration sessions about how bad life was, how awful men were and the miserable time we were having in our jobs.

"They'd start in a wine bar straight after work and last until the early hours, when I was always the first to crash out after two much red wine and cartons of ice cream.""

Serena and Brian rallied around when she had a four-month affair with a Daniel Cleaver-type who was already attached. Later they talked her into going on a blind date.

"It was a complete disaster," recalls Susannah. "The moment he stepped out of the taxi, I realised it was going to be a long night. I ended up spending a lot of time in the loo - anything to get away from him.""

She also had some embarrassing moments at work. Once, her manager was giving an important sales pitch.

"I was sitting next to him, taking notes, when I noticed what looked like an old rag coming out of the leg of his trousers," she says. "He must have pulled them off in a hurry the night before, because they were yesterday's underpants.

"When they eventually landed on the floor, I had to reach across and stuff them in my handbag. My face was puce and the clients looked horrified.""

Every Wednesday, she would pore over the Bridget Jones column in The Independent.

"Sometimes it would get a bit much and I got paranoid that I really was the model for what happened to Bridget," she says. "It was a standing joke that Helen Fielding was watching my every move. I began to wonder if I was modelling myself on Bridget, or she was modelling herself on me.""

One week, she was shocked to read that Bridget was planning a romantic break with a potential lover in Prague.

"I'd just called off a weekend in Prague with a possible boyfriend at the very last minute. I'd booked the flights and hotel, but woke up in a cold sweat. I thought: 'What am I doing? Do I really want to be with this wholly unsuitable person who I hardly know? Better get out now before I make a huge mistake.'

"So I plucked up the courage to tell him I couldn't go. I ended up going with my gay friend.""

Another Bridget-style episode was a liaison in Paris with a Madrid DJ called Graham. Susannah - who had now left the paper and was working for almost twice her old salary in radio - was sure he was The One.

I MARCHED in to see my boss and announced I was moving to Madrid to open a salsa bar with Graham," she says. "People must have thought I'd gone mad to give up everything on a whim.""

She sold her furniture and most of her belongings in jumble sales and drove through France to join her new man. They did open their salsa club, but their affair was over in nine months.

Susannah began a new career as a sub-editor on Hello! magazine and fell in love with the vibrant continental lifestyle. She says: "There was no way I could have returned to London. My life was virtually perfect. For the first time in years, I stopped thinking that I needed a man in tow to be truly fulfilled.""

So it was ironic that it was then she met her future husband, Cuban musician Vladimir Nunez de Moya, 11 years her junior.

"I was stood up by a friend of my sister's," laughs Susannah, giggling because it's the sort of thing which might happen to Bridget.

"He was in Madrid and I'd arranged to meet him. I waited and waited, but he didn't turn up. Walking home, I heard the most incredible Cuban music coming from one of my favourite salsa bars. I went in and Vladimir was playing the bongos. And that was that.

"I knew I'd struck gold when this gorgeous, fit, non-drinking, non-smoking, unassuming Cuban man quietly asked me if he could ask my father for my hand in marriage. What British man would do that? I said he didn't have to ask my father because I made the decisions and the answer was definitely Yes.

"Someone like Vladimir would be good for Bridget, because he likes shapely women with hips and a bust. And he helped me to finally give up smoking.""

They married in Madrid in June 1998, and hope to start a family soon. Anyone who watches them dancing salsa together can see their incredible chemistry.

"It's weird how things have worked out, but I know my own mind now and I'm not bothered what people think," says Susannah.

"If only Bridget could do the same. I love her dearly, but I want to shake her up. Somehow, I fear she'll still be obsessed with the same things when she's a grandmother.

"As for me, I won't be giving them a second thought - or will I?"

SUSANNAH'S MOVIE VIEW

BJ FANS will not be disappointed. The casting is perfection, the comic timing spot-on and the soundtrack is set to have a cult following of its own. And for all its clever references and twists, which all BJ followers will lap up, it is also a delicious romantic comedy.

Probably the best compliment of the night was paid by my Cuban husband Vladimir, who, despite speaking barely a word of English, waved me away when I tried to fill him in on the storyline and laughed, cried and applauded with the best of them.

Renee Zellweger is great. It cannot have been easy for the tiny Texan to turn herself into a voluptuously "normal" size 12, but her very English version is totally convincing. Her Bridget is cute and womanly, and it makes perfect sense that in the end men are going to be lining up.

Hugh Grant, as bad boy Daniel Cleaver, is smooth, funny, naughty and gorgeous. And Colin Firth as Mark Darcy is the casting from heaven - everyone's wish come true.

It's a great movie, so go dig out your scariest pants in Bridget's honour and enjoy. (v.v. good.)