Renee adds bite to role as Judy
RENEE ZELLWEGER really got to grips with her role as Hollywood legend Judy Garland – by wearing numerous sets of false teeth.
Makeup designer Jeremy Woodhead says he made “seven or eight” prosthetic sets for the Bridget Jones star to wear over her real ones to look and sound as close to the late icon as possible in Judy, which opened in the UK last week.
Garland’s already-gappy teeth had begun to rot as a result of years of alcohol and drug abuse, and were severely decayed before her death in London in 1969, at the age of 47, from an accidental barbiturate overdose.
The film’s director Rupert Goold said: “Renee would take each set home so she could practise singing with them in.
“They transformed her appearance as well as her voice. I would show people photos of her wearing them and say,
‘Who’s this?’ Most didn’t have a clue it was Renee – it was absolutely brilliant.”
Goold also made the actress push a small piano around a rehearsal room while she sang hits such as Over The Rainbow from Garland’s 1939 classicthewizard Of Oz.
Zellweger, who is tipped for Oscar glory for the role, said: “He wanted me to feel the intense physical pressure – or something like it – that her body must have been experiencing.”
On several occasions Garland was booed off stage as she made a mess of her performance and Zellweger added: “It must have been agonising for her, trying to put on a show in unbearable pain and under terrible circumstances.”