12-year-old boy in new Bridget Jones film

The next Bridget Jones film will feature a boy from Stoke Row.

Noah Alden-Court, 12, a pupil at Sir William Borlase Grammar School in Marlow, will appear as a pupil at a private secondary school in London.

Bridget Jones – Crazy about the Boythe fourth part of the series, Renée Zellweger will play Bridget, a
51-year-old widowed single mother of two children.

Her co-stars include Leo Woodall, Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant.

The film follows the plot of the 2013 book by Helen Fielding and is scheduled to be released on Valentine's Day next year.

Noah auditioned for the role with the help of a family friend who said he had the right look for the role and was the right age for the casting.

He will be one of many students at the fictional school. Filming took place over three days in May at a real school in Highgate, near Hampstead. The actors lived there and filmed for around nine hours each day.

Noah, who plays for the Marlow United Lions under-13 team and supports Wolverhampton Wanderers, was supervised as his parents were not allowed on set and he met Grant and Zellweger.

He said: “My father drove me there. We had to get there quite early and leave at six.

“It was a pretty nice school. I was really excited because I thought it was a pretty cool experience and I made a lot of new friends. When Renée hugged me, I was a little bit like, 'Is this really happening?'

“I was standing there, cold, and she came up to me and put her coat around me to keep me warm. I never expected that. I also shook hands with Hugh Grant and he was really funny.

“I had to walk past the principal in the schoolyard and say 'Excuse me, sir' in the background.

“In one of the scenes I had to approach some people and talk about football, which was quite easy because I'm a huge football fan.”

Noah wore a red school jumper with the Galsworthy House School logo, a white shirt and striped tie, as well as knee-length grey socks and plain black school shoes.

He said: “The outfits I had to wear were a bit posh in my opinion. I didn't like the trousers and shorts because they looked a bit silly, but I was in the background.

“The actors were really friendly and very nice. I was able to sit with all my friends because it was quite a demanding job.

“I'll be a little proud when I see him in the cinema. I'll think: 'That's me.'”

Noah's mother Laura, who works as an assistant to the chief financial officer at Thames Water, said she was “excited” when she learned Noah would be starring in the film.

She said: “I’m super proud and excited because it’s huge.

“It will be released worldwide. I am very proud.

“He did all this outside of school and gets paid for it – it’s real work.

“He had never heard of Renée Zellweger or Hugh Grant. He just took it in his stride, but he became best friends with the little boy who I think plays Bridget's son.

“It's also given him a lot of confidence. Giving kids this experience at this age is so good for them.

“He was moaning and moaning a little bit about the costume he was given and said, 'That's not cool, Mom.'”

“For him, it was a really long day on the bus from the studios to the destination, with a lot of waiting.

“You need a lot of patience and Noah was completely exhausted at the end, but he took it in his stride.

“When he first found out, he came back from his dad's one day and said, 'I think I'm going to do some shooting for a movie,' and I said, 'Which one?'

He said, “I don't know.” It took me a couple of weeks to get it out of him, and he still didn't know.

“I picked Noah up from school one day and he said it was Britney Spears.

“I said, 'What do you mean, Britney Spears?'

“I texted his dad and he said, 'No, it's Bridget Jones.'” Noah had confused the two.

“When he said he had met Hugh Grant, I asked him if he was sure it was Hugh and said, 'What did he look like?' because I'm a huge fan.

“Noah said, 'He's just kind of grey – he's old and grey'!”

The young actor and his family will attend the premiere of the film in Leicester Square, which is expected to take place about a month before the film's release.