Beeban Kidron

Born: 1961
Where: UK

The arch femininst film-maker and documentarist was the surprise choice to direct the Bridget Jones sequel - The Edge of Reason.

Kidron first attracted attention with her acclaimed TV adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not Only Fruit with the late Charlotte Coleman.

She went on to make the female buddy movie Antonia and Jane before switching to gritty documentaries with Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns.

After a Marxist upbringing, Kidron was a 20-year-old still at film school when she made her first movie, the documentary Carry Greenham Home.

In 1988 she made her feature debut with the Jim Cartwright-scripted Vroom with Diana Quick and Clive Owen.

After the Alexei Sayle TV comedy Itch, she adapted Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, a tale of a lesbian teenage growing up and dismissed by one White City executive as "not very BBC".

Antonia and Jane saw Imelda Staunton and Saskia Reeves playing two friends - one dumpy the other glamorous - who envy each others lives.

In 1992, she made her American feature debut with Used People, a comedy-drama starring Shirley McLaine and Kathy Bates.

Switching tack, she made the self-explanatory documentary Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and Their Johns before returning to the small screen with another Winterson adaptation, Great Moments in Aviation.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar owed a little to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert but did have the novelty of getting Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze to drag up.

Subsequent movies included the romantic drama Swept from the Sea with Rachel Weisz and Ian McKellen and a succession of TV work, including Julie Walters in Murder.

In 2004, she took the reins of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, starring Renee Zellwegger reprising her role as the Chardonnay-swigging ball of insecurities.