Finding the joy in Judy Garland
Renée Zellweger is earning award buzz for her portrayal of the late movie legend
Renée Zellweger credits a “series of shared experiments” with helping her craft her dazzling and often heartbreaking portrayal of singer and Hollywood legend Judy Garland in Judy, having its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Tuesday. And that included some piano moving. “It didn’t go very far, I can tell you that,” says Zellweger of trying to shift a heavy piano around a rehearsal studio.
The piano-pushing exercise, along with kicking chairs over — all while singing in character — came from Judy director Rupert Goold as Zellweger rehearsed the show-stopping, affirming ballad “By Myself.”
“He wanted a palpable struggle and a lot of uncertainty in the song, where you’re not sure where it’s going to go,” Zellweger said of the English theatre director’s approach.
Whether it ends in triumph or disaster, uncertainty punctuates all of Garland’s onstage performance in Judy. The story focuses on the winter of1968, when the 46-year-old singer was broke, homeless, unable to get work in the U.S. and struggling for custody of her two children with ex-husband Sidney Luft.
Garland agreed to a run at London’s The Talk of the Town nightclub to pay her bills and, she hoped, keep her children. At the time she was unpredictable, fragile, addicted to alcohol and pills, and tormented by being apart from her kids. Whether she would show up for a performance, and what state she’d be in when she did, creates a thread of tension through the
film. Garland died of an overdose at age 47, six months after her London shows ended.
Zellweger, by way of contrast to all of this, walks into the room with a firm handshake and a hint of Texas twang in her greeting. She’s dressed for comfort on a busy day of media interviews, wearing black Converse All Stars and a slouchy navy-blue sweater.
We talk about Toronto, the city’s changes and her stints here making Cinderella Man and multiple- Oscar winner Chicago. “It’s such a special city. I love it here,” she says. As for turning 50 in April, there’s much to celebrate: “I love it,” Zellweger says. “I feel like a teenager. I love it so much.”
Garland didn’t make it to 50 — the unending pressure from the studio to look and act in prescribed ways was torment and it started early. Judy includes flashbacks to Garland’s MGM Wizard of Oz days, when the young performer was a screen sweetheart controlled by manipulative studio head Louis B. Mayer, fed pills to keep her slim, awake or asleep.
It seems Zellweger has been laying the groundwork for playing Garland (a performance that is already generating Oscar chatter) for years. She showed impressive singing and dancing chops in Chicago, earning an Oscar nomination. With her Oscar-winning role of determined Ruby Thewes in Cold Mountain, audiences saw her comic skills. And then there’s the guileless charm in both her breakout role in Jerry Maguire and as the titular Bridget Jones in a trio of films. All show up to varying degrees in Judy.
The charm may be the surprising element for moviegoers, who may not know much about Garland beyond the yellow brick road. Despite her demons, addiction and public troubles, the singer was bright, quick and could be very funny.
Judy gives her a chance to “fill in the blanks between public conjecture and (Garland’s) critics’ omissions,” Zellweger says.
She has obvious affection for Garland and studied countless hours of TV talk shows on which she was a popular, if unpredictable, guest. “She was amazing. She could hit ’em back with the best of them,” Zellweger says. “She was a dame.”
Zellweger was also moved by a 1967 Barbara Walters TV interview with Garland, her kids Lorna and Joey Luft by her side. It reveals a vulnerable woman, says Zellweger, one whose ambition was to be “happily married and just a nice lady.” She studied every movement; how Garland prowled across the stage and held her microphone, “whipping the cord around like she’s a lion tamer.”
Unlike some biopic performances, her portrayal of Garland isn’t mimicry. There are flashes of Zellweger throughout, resulting in a compelling turn from an actor at the pinnacle of her game. Prosthetics, wigs, dark contact lenses and Garland’s signature hip-thrusting slump helped create the singer’s physical presence. Zellweger said she slouched for all her costume fittings, so that none of the dresses would zip if she stood with proper posture.
She worked with a voice coach to nail Garland’s tremulous speaking voice. The singing was a process, says Zellweger, who sang live for much of filming. She trained with vocal coaches for months and listened to Garland constantly. “There were little breakthroughs every day,” she says. “It was a collaboration. Always a team.”
Garland struggles to have her own identity in Judy, protesting she’s Judy Garland, the movie star, singer and public figure, for only an hour a day. Does Zellweger ever feel like that?
“No, not at home and with my friends and my family and my dogs,” she says.
Zellweger stepped back from her career in 2010 for several years, taking a break before returning for Bridget Jones’s Baby in 2016. This year she also stars in Netflix thriller series What/ If. But it’s Judy that people are going to be talking about this fall, as they see Zellweger bring Garland to life onscreen in exploring the last act of a star.
“I think that’s one of the wonderful things about telling this story about this stage of her life is it shows it was not completely tragic,” Zellweger says. “She was hopeful and she got so much joy out of connecting with her audience and performing, and she never gave up. Never.”