A FORMER Bentham woman has been dressing the stars in one of the movie industry's hottest new films - Bridget Jones's Diary.

Thirty-five-year-old Rachael Fleming was chief costume designer for the film, which is based on Helen Fielding's best-selling book. Already a smash-hit, it follows the life of a single thirty-something woman constantly battling with her weight, alcohol consumption, smoking habit and disastrous love-life.

Rachael designed and created outfits for American actress Renee Zellweger, who plays the lead role, as well as for English actors Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

She now lives in Islington, London, with her film producer husband Andrew Macdonald, but her parents, Malcolm and Anne, still live at the family home between Bentham and Ingleton.

Now a mother-of-two, Rachael attended Settle High School before going on to study at York Art College. She got her big break working on pop promos (videos) for a long list of stars including Bros, Oasis, Blur, Cliff Richard, Barry Manilow, Sting, Kim Wilde and many more.

After several years in the music industry, Rachael launched herself as one of the top costume designers in films, working on productions such as Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, Twin Town and The Beach. For the latter, Rachael had to fly out to Thailand and dress, among other cast members, heart-throb Leonardo DiCaprio.

For Bridget Jones, Rachael designed costumes for more than 100 cast members with some of the most memorable including Bridget's fancy dress bunny outfit and an awful floral-patterned carpet dress she is forced to wear by her mother.

She said: "I made all the costumes like the bunny outfit and the reindeer jumper that Colin Firth had to wear. I also had to sort out all of Hugh's suits, which had to be specially made up.

"All the actors were really nice on the set, especially Renee, and Hugh was such a laugh as well."

Rachael said one of the hardest things was making constant changes to Bridget's clothes, as actress Renee Zellweger had to gain between 15 and 20 pounds for the film: "We couldn't start getting costumes ready for her until about a week before the filming started, especially with the bunny outfit which we kept having to make bigger and bigger with her putting more weight on.

"Renee had a dietician who was helping her with it all, but she was a really energetic girl as well so I think she just stopped doing so much exercising to help the weight pile on."