Renée Zellweger “came to set” in character as Bridget Jones while shooting Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.

Michael Morris, the romantic comedy’s director, revealed to Us Weekly that Zellweger didn’t show up to the set as herself but as her famous counterpart, who she has now played four times.

“It is absolutely true to say that she walks in as Bridget and there’s something really profoundly affecting about that,” the filmmaker said. “Because we all expected Renée to come (to set)… That is not what happens. Bridget comes in, and there’s a massive difference in the way that she walks, the way that she sits, the way that she leans. It’s Bridget.”

Morris added that he and the crew had an “out of body experience” watching the Chicago actress walking around set as the hopeless romantic.

“Like, ‘I’m talking to Bridget Jones behind the scenes of the set of Bridget Jones, what? My head is exploding! This is so weird,'” he recalled. “It honestly felt like that. So from the very start, Bridget was there and it just makes everything better. Because it means you can just get into it.”

Zellweger made her debut in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and reprised the role for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Despite those three outings, the U.S. actress struggled to find Bridget’s voice again for the fourth film.

To help her maintain the voice throughout production, Zellweger stayed in Bridget’s British accent 24/7 because she found it easier than trying to slip back into it every day.

“I wouldn’t say it was method acting as much as it was lazy,” she joked to People. “I didn’t want to start every morning trying to make my vowels sound right. I just wanted it to be a habit. I didn’t want to work that hard!”

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is now in U.K. cinemas.

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