Judy was a dream for many involved
ZELLWEGER: ON RECREATING A LEGEND
Hair, makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead and costume designer Jany Temime relished the challenge.
Renée Zellweger’s interest was immediately piqued when she was tapped to play Judy Garland. Having been a lifelong fan, it was an opportunity and a challenge she couldn’t pass up. For producer David Livingstone, Zellweger was the obvious choice.
He explains: “When Renée took on the role, she wanted to make sure it had honesty, integrity and authenticity, so it didn’t look like a caricature.”
A year before the official rehearsal process began, Zellweger started training with a vocal coach in the US, before finally rehearsing for four months with the film’s musical director, Matt Dunkley.
“What appealed to me about this film project was that it’s such a unique opportunity to revisit these classic songs and the wonderful American song book, with some really wonderful arrangements,” says Dunkley.
Despite having previous singing experience in films like Chicago, training to become Judy Garland was a huge step into the unknown for Zellweger.
Immersion in all things Garland was the key. Zellweger adds: “I had many moments in the car when for that whole year Judy was riding shotgun. I listened to her music and her speaking, I researched the stories – the whole thing.”
Encapsulating such a singular figure wasn’t just down to the singing – the distinctive accent, tone of voice and movements during the on-stage performance, all had to be mastered.
Dunkley always had confidence in Zellweger’s ability on that front: “She’s an actress who can sing rather than a singer who can act.
“So, I always knew that the acting side of it was going to be fantastic. She trained with a speaking voice coach to get the sound of Judy’s voice and her pronunciation and she worked with a choreographer to get her mannerisms. Judy was quite twitchy in her body movements and Renée’s capturing of that was amazing.”
Director Rupert Goold was equally impressed by Zellweger’s physical transformation: “One of my favourite parts of her performance is how she holds her shoulders. Judy had this curvature of the spine and it made her look much older and frailer than she really was in the later part of her life.
“On the first day I thought ‘oh wow, this is a proper actor, this is somebody who is playing a role, not just putting on an outfit’.”
For Zellweger, the physical transformation that she was able to make manifest relied just as much on the abilities of hair and makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead, and on costume designer Jany Temime. Woodhead relished the challenge, made all the more pleasant by his subject:
“Working closely with actors as we do, we usually get a good relationship fairly quickly but it was instant with Renée. I fell in love with her; she’s so easygoing but so professional. Her humour is there; her love of life, her energy and her excitement about all things is tangible, and very similar to what Garland seemed to have.”
Research into Judy’s appearance at the time was vital. “The good thing about Garland is that she is very well documented; her looks are very well photographed,” continues Woodhead. “It’s a matter of collating all the research and working out what hairstyles and what makeup would transfer well onto Renée, discarding some and pushing others to compensate for the fact that their face shapes are quite different.
“We then honed the different hairstyles that Judy Garland had at that time and decided which ones would work best on Renée.” Zellweger was very impressed with Woodhead’s constant updates to Judy’s hairstyles as the movie progressed: “Someone who makes extraordinary wigs in LA did this beautiful piece and Jeremy played with it every day and chopped it up with fearless abandon.”
Of equal importance was making sure that the costumes felt as authentic as possible to that period of Judy’s life. “All those costumes are entirely down to Jany Temime, and all are influenced by what Judy Garland wore at certain points, while also informing the progression of her character,” says Livingstone.
“Jany is fantastic because she gets an idea and she’s uncompromising; she won’t settle for anything less than extraordinary,” adds Zellweger. “These costumes were on another level and to be able to pull out one after the next and with such immaculate construction was amazing.”
“I asked to do the film because I was a fan, a superfan of Judy Garland,” says Temime. “We also had the chance to recreate the very beautiful looks of 1968 London and iconic 1930s Hollywood. That was a box of dreams and I styled all of the costumes in 1938 in that spirit.” – Citizen reporter