Forget Renee... just watch the movies my mother did, says Judy Garland’s daughter
RENEE Zellweger’s awards-tipped portrayal of Judy Garland is already the talk of Tinseltown.
But it seems there is one person who won’t be rushing out to watch it.
The Wizard of Oz star’s daughter Lorna Luft has urged fans not to see the new biopic of her mother’s life – and just to re-watch her films instead. Miss Luft said she is ‘really protective’ of her mother’s legacy and will not go to see Miss Zellweger play her when the movie comes out next week.
The US television actress, 66, told Good Morning Britain yesterday: ‘I feel that if you really want to know about my mum, go see her movies and go listen to her recordings and go watch her television shows.
‘By the time my mother was 37, she had made 39 movies, and she had done over 500 radio shows, 1,257 concerts. So, it was an extraordinary career.
‘And I sit here and I think to myself that I’m the luckiest person in the world to have had her as my mum. She passed away early but what an incredible legacy that she left.’
Miss Garland was married five times, and ended up with money troubles before dying of an accidental overdose at the age of just 47. The film Judy is set in 1969, over the last months of the singer’s life as she battled an addiction to prescription drugs.
Speaking about the role, Miss Zellweger said: ‘I didn’t know that they were giving her [Garland] drugs... every day there were pills: Pills to keep her weight down; pills to temper her development; pills to wake her up; pills to go to sleep. I didn’t know that it was those drugs that probably led to her addiction.’ Judy is in cinemas from Friday next week.