Shazzer is me, only funnier

The Daily Telegraph - April 5, 2001

Sharon Maguire has an unusual qualification for directing Bridget Jones's Diary - she's one of the characters in it. But, as she tells Emma Hall, it didn't make her high-profile feature-film debut any easier

SHARON MAGUIRE, director of the long-awaited film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary, is sitting in Costa Coffee munching furiously on what looks like a lifetime's supply of rice cakes. "I've heard that supermodels eat rice cakes. But mine are interspersed with chocolate fingers," she says, in classic Bridget Jones style.

The Bridget Jones connection goes deeper than the three years she spent working on the film: Maguire is a friend of the author, Helen Fielding, and the inspiration behind Shazzer, Bridget's ranting feminist friend.

"I'm delighted to be in the book, especially as Shazzer is so much wittier than me," says Maguire. "The only thing is that you go to parties and you worry that people will expect you to be funnier than you really are."

When we meet, Maguire is eating rice cakes and watching her calorie intake because she is on her way to New York for the US premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary (which took place on Monday; the UK premiere was last night). It is her debut feature film."I didn't think I'd finish the film on a Monday and then be flying out to the premiere on the Friday," she complains. "I thought I'd have months to look for frocks and bask in the glory of having survived."

She survived the project even after Fielding - who openly petitioned for Maguire to direct the film - moved to Los Angeles to write a second book, leaving Richard Curtis and Andrew Davies to write the final version of the script. And she survived as director even as the low-budget British film became a $22 million production with an all-star cast including Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

"It just grew and grew," she says. "I said I wanted Hugh Grant, so the budget went up, and Helen had always dreamed of Colin Firth. I just worked on the basis that I wanted the cast to be right and pretended I didn't know how much it cost."

Isn't it a bit scary when the world is expecting so much of your first feature film? "In the wee small hours, I did have to stop and take a deep breath," she admits, "but, in the day, you just have to get on with it because there's so much to do.

"Every day we filmed for about 17 hours and I had to answer 15,000 questions. When I got into bed at night, I'd lie there thinking, 'I don't know the answer to any more questions,' but then the phone and fax would go with more questions to answer."

The questions were made even harder by the fact that so many people had so much invested in getting the right answers. "With your first film, you can't be the auteur you want to be. You have to make it your own as much as you can, but Working Title, Universal and Miramax all have as much of a stake in it as I do - in fact, more, because of the money they are investing. They are investing in me, too, so I listen to them. They have fabulous commercial instincts."

Not that Maguire was intimidated by her powerful backers and A-list stars. She had the confidence to suggest that Zellweger (a Texan) should work in a London publishing company before attempting to recreate Bridget on screen.

Maguire also remained undaunted by Hugh Grant's perfectionist style of acting (he came to work every day with his scripts covered in tiny detailed notes). Only Colin Firth came near to unsettling the director on her debut, because, just like Bridget Jones, she has nursed a crush on him for years.

As well as having fun with the dialogue, Maguire played around with visual references in the film. The Dickensian portrayal of London, with storybook snowfall at the beginning and end of the film, was inspired by one of her favourite movies. "I nicked the snow scenes from It's a Wonderful Life. Both films show the ups and downs of life, and the snow gives a fairytale feel and a sense of cinema."

"Bridget Jones is meant to be a funny night out, but with emotional truth. I wanted to make it a classic that you can pick up in 10 years and not cringe over. The singleton is still a relevant social phenomenon. It continues to be an issue that we're all dealing with."

The glamour of the New York event is a long way from the Coventry council house where she grew up in an Irish Catholic family. She graduated from Aberystwyth University in the mid-Eighties and moved to London, where she got a job as a copywriter in the promotions department of Penguin.

After five years in the backwaters of publishing, ambition kicked in and she completed a post-graduate course in journalism at City University. A placement on The Media Show led to a full time job on the programme, first as a researcher and then as a director. In 1991, she moved to the BBC as a producer/director on The Late Show. From there she went on to make documentaries, including Dame Henrietta's Dream - A Year in the Life of Hampstead Garden Suburb for Omnibus.

"That was the old BBC," she says, "I had two years to make it and shot the whole thing on film. It's a great way to learn your craft."

Maguire left the BBC to make ads in the mid-Nineties. She was plunged straight into a job for the Irish Tourist Board, which involved three months' filming around Ireland to create a series of commercials that are still running all over the world.

She'd like to do more. "Commercials are fun. And," she adds wryly, "advertising was good preparation for the politics of feature films."

If making the film was tough, Maguire was always tougher. "I'm not part of a middle-class establishment. I'm working class and I grew up in a council house," she rants, Shazzer-style.

But, as she ploughs through the rice cakes and black coffee, she reflects: "You've got to put it into perspective. It's just a film. Even if it all turns out wrong, it's only a romantic comedy - something to eat your pizza with."