MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures
“[AS A child] I remember lying in the grass, staring at the clouds, wondering where they drifted off to after they floated over Texas,” recalled Renée Kathleen Zellweger. “I never would have imagined that one day I would follow one of those clouds and find myself in Hollywood.” Once she did, the sky was the limit — as she found success from Jerry Maguire to her Bridget Jones trilogy, as well as acclaim for her Oscar-winning turns in Cold Mountain and Judy. But these days Renée, who turns 55 on April 25, doesn’t want to be defined by any role, on-screen or off. “There is a big difference between being your absolute best, most vibrant self and wanting to be what you’re not,” she says. “To be vibrant and beautiful, you must embrace your age. Otherwise you are living apologetically, and to me that’s not beautiful at all.”
2005 CINDERELLA STORY “Those are my favorite kinds of films,” she’d confess of Cinderella Man (with Russell Crowe). “[I like movies] where you invest emotionally and walk away having a different perspective on your life, or life in general. I love the ability that a good film has to inspire. And I knew this would.“
2009 ONE CHANCE Soon after My One and Only, she’d take a sixyear hiatus from Hollywood because, “I wanted to grow. If you don’t explore other things, you wake up 20 years later and you’re still that same person who only learns anything when she goes out to research a character. You need to grow!”
“I want to understand things. I’m curious... Curiosity, I’m driven by it.” —Renée Zellweger
1994 NEXT STEP “We were just excited we had a job,” admitted Renée of her first leading role, opposite Matthew McConaughey in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. “How we pulled that off, I have no idea. I’m sure none of it was legal. Anything we did was a little bit dangerous...
But what an experience!”
2001 DEAR DIARY She’d come away with a big hit with Bridget Jones’s Diary... as well as one big misperception. “I’ve been plagued by this whole, Renée has such a sad, challenging love life... It’s just not true!“
2019 PUBLIC DEMAND “I don’t think I would have been able to empathize with her situation in the same way 15 or 20 years ago,” reflected Renée about her Oscar-winning role as Judy Garland in the biopic Judy. “It’s unnatural to live in this profession and have a public persona, it’s very bizarre,” she confessed. “It’s quite complicated, and it can be dehumanizing.”
2002 HART FELT For her turn as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago, Renée won a Golden Globe but felt like “such an impostor... because I feel like there’s bound to be somebody else who’s worked for a really, really long time who deserved this beautiful experience that I’ve had.”
1996 CRUISING IN “It was a pivotal moment, not just professionally, but for me personally,” confessed Renée of starring with Tom Cruise in the hit Jerry Maguire. “[Making it] I was straddling this place in my mind between disbelief and this overwhelming sense of responsibility not to screw the whole thing up.”
2022 GOING ABOUT IT For TV’s The Thing About Pam, Renée sat for four hours in the makeup chair because, “Pam really intrigued me as a character. How she presents herself is so completely far removed from the truth of who she is. It was like playing a role within a role.”
2000 BETTY LOOP Whether it’s a dramatic turn or playing a loopy soap opera fan in the pic Nurse Betty, Renée’s approach to acting remains consistent. “I always try to concentrate on something that is true, something that moves me.”
2004 TRY ME Upon winning an Oscar for Cold Mountain, she’d thank her parents for “never saying, ‘Don’t try.’” So, the statue’s present locale is apropos. “It’s next to all the photographs of people that I love the most.”