The return of Renée

Jess Cagle | People – September 26, 2016


© Brian Bowen Smith

With Bridget Jones’s Baby, her first movie in 6 years, Renée Zellweger is back in the spotlight. Finally healthy, happy and in love, she opens up about why she took time off, the changes in her life (and appearance) and her journey from Texas to Hollywood.

I first met Renée Zellweger 20 years ago. She was an unknown actress from Katy, Texas, but she had scored the lead female role opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. A few weeks before the movie’s release, the studio took her around to meet magazine editors in New York City. She was charming, funny and smart. But I wondered, even then, how this sweet, somewhat shy young woman would adjust to life in the public eye. When she was a girl – the daughter of immigrant parents – she had dreamed of becoming a writer, not an actress. And the vulnerability that would make her such a relatable, likable movie star isn’t manufactured. She lacks the thick skin you need to enjoy celebrity despite its downsides. Stardom came fast and furious: two hit Bridget Jones films; Chicago, in which she was both funny and shattering as Roxie Hart (and she could sing!); Cold Mountain, which earned her an Oscar.


But the past decade has been one of challenges and change. Her 2005 marriage to Kenny Chesney was quickly annulled. She made several movies back-to-back, most of which didn’t connect with audiences. Feeling “depleted” and aware that “my personal life had taken a backseat,” she took a few years off. She began writing again. She fell in love with guitarist-singer and old friend Doyle Bramhall II. She says she learned to take care of herself. Since she returned to the spotlight two years ago, there has been endless speculation about whether she had plastic surgery while she was away. Recently, in a Huffington Post essay, she criticized the speculation as sexist and said, “I did not make a decision to alter my appearance and have surgery on my eyes.” That statement is open to interpretation: It could mean she has zero interest in sharing her beauty regimen or that she’s just unwilling to give in to the mean-spirited judgments of the Internet.

As she returns to the big screen in Bridget Jones’s Baby, Zellweger, 47, is guarded in interviews, but that doesn’t come naturally to her. To her friends she’s loyal and open, generous and grateful. And in case you’re wondering, in person she looks healthy and happy. Her eyes are still adorably squinty. Her face has thinned out a bit – less cherubic now, and more elegant. But she still looks and acts like the irresistible woman who, on the eve of fame and fortune, had me at “hello.”


Where is Bridget Jones in her life?


Well, she’s a little bit older, she’s matured, she’s now producing a serious news chat show. She’s accomplished some of the things that she thought were going to make her life fit her ideal. And she still doesn’t quite have it all together. She’s single. She’s probably less naive, but no less hopelessly romantic. Vulnerable. She’s still perfectly imperfect.

What was your first reaction when the filmmakers said she would be pregnant and not know who the father was?

[Laughs] That sounded right. I didn’t feel myself judging her about it. There’s such a sweetness to who she is, such a purity to who she is as a person, that I wasn’t really thinking, “Tart.” Sharon Maguire, the director, Emma Thompson and the whole creative team did such a great job at making that predicament relatable and understandable. It’s sort of a really nice way to introduce the idea of challenging the social paradigms. The idea about what it is that your life is supposed to look like, the ideal, what you’re supposed to achieve by a certain stage in your life. I like that in this incarnation of Bridget’s life experience, she’s sort of defining happiness for herself, and it has nothing to do with a man or society’s expectations or familial pressures.

Tell me about growing up in Katy, Texas. What did you do on Friday nights?

You go to the football game, of course! [Laughs] And you cheer at the football game, of course. You know, Friday Night Lights – it was very much like that.

Did having immigrant parents [her mother is from Norway, her father from Switzerland] give you a different perspective than other kids?


They had both been through the Second World War. That shapes how you see life and what you value. I’m sure that informed a lot of my brother’s and my life perspective. I’ve seen very few pictures of [my mother] as a girl. The village was burned after the war, by the Germans. Nothing remained.


In high school, what did you dream of becoming?


I wanted to travel. I wanted to write. I was going to go to school, and I was going to study journalism.


Where did you discover acting?


It had been part of my adolescent experience – speech and drama. But I didn’t think that it was going to be part of my life after I graduated. But I took a drama course so that I could fill out the fine-arts prerequisite at the University of Texas. And I loved it, just loved it.


What was your first acting job?


It was a Japanese commercial, and we were filming in the middle of a field, wearing schoolgirl uniforms… and we were playing tug-of-war. I had a great time, and I don’t know what that says about a person. [Laughs] But that was the first job.


You were almost killed by Leatherface [in 1994’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, costarring another unknown Texan, Matthew McConaughey].


Yeah, probably literally. It was a lot of fun. It was my first role, really. I couldn’t believe that somebody was going to trust me with that. I was really grateful.


The movie got rereleased after you both became famous. Did that annoy or amuse you?


Oh, I have no shame about that. Let’s go!


I think I tried to interview you about it at the time, and you said no.


I didn’t get your invitation! We can do it now!


Finally, my career and life are complete.


A little delay, but it’s okay.


Do you remember auditioning for Jerry Maguire?

I remember driving to Sony studios with the windows down and the music blaring on the radio and just laughing, because it was so funny to me that I was driving to Sony studios and they were going to let me on the lot. And Tom Cruise was there, and he was waiting for me. I couldn’t believe that.

How was the overnight fame for you?

I got really busy. There were definitely things that I needed to learn, because you’re not born with the faculties to know how to navigate those things. A lot of strange things that you just don’t anticipate.


What was strange?


That there’s an idea about who you are that becomes bigger than the truth of who you are. That sometimes people don’t hear what you say, because they get lost in the idea of who you are. That it’s not safe to live like a normal person. That you have to adjust your thinking and the choices that you make, not because you want to, but because it’s unwise not to. Right [around then], I met Mike Nichols for the first time. He asked me how old I was, how long I had been in this business, and did I know what was about to happen in my life. He compared fame to Medusa, and he said that it can destroy you. If you look right at it and embrace it, [it can] turn you to stone. You have to look at it through a prism and let the prism be the people that you love, that care about you the most. Looking back, it was really profound.


What do you remember about winning the Oscar [in 2004]? Was it like, there’s Jack Nicholson…?


It was exactly like that, but it was Sean Penn. I don’t remember what I said, I don’t remember how I managed not to fall. That was the thought going up the stairs: “Don’t fall.”


In that respect, you did better than Jennifer Lawrence.


I loved that moment. She was brilliant. [Laughs] I cheered for her when she won, I cheered for her [when] she said, “Please stop clapping, because I know you’re just doing that because you feel sorry for me.” Brilliant, endearing. Way to go.


Let’s skip ahead to 2014. You went to an event, and people hadn’t seen you in a while. There was this kind of global obsession: Why does she look different? You made this statement to People: “I’m glad folks think I look different. I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows… My friends say I look peaceful. I am healthy. For a long time I wasn’t doing such a good job with that. I took on a schedule that is not realistically sustainable and didn’t allow for taking care of myself… I kept running until I was depleted and made bad choices about how to conceal the exhaustion… Perhaps I look different. Who doesn’t as they get older? Ha. But I am different. I’m happy.” You were 45 when you said this. What were you doing differently to make you feel that you were living a more fulfilling life?


That’s a big question. I guess it goes back to gratitude. And I think that that was something that had become a little bit… well, depleted in my life, with respect to the extraordinary opportunities that I was having as an actress. I think I was really tired. And what I hadn’t learned at that point and should have a long, long time ago – but for some of us it takes a little bit longer – is how to take care of myself with respect to acknowledging limitations and boundaries. My personal life had taken a backseat to fulfilling my professional obligations. I felt a responsibility not to let people down. And so I just kept going. And there wasn’t a reason not to. I didn’t have children or an established relationship that dictated I make different choices. And because of the choices I was making and the life that I was living, I had no time to develop that in my life.


Is that what you meant when you said you were not being healthy?


Yeah, that’s not healthy. You never rest. You can’t only do the things that fuel a person spiritually when you have time for them.


You said you made bad choices about how to conceal your exhaustion. What were you referring to?


Bad advice. When someone else’s suggestion about what might be a good idea feels like kindness.


Two thousand five to 2010 were difficult years. A marriage annulment, back-to-back movies – at what point did you decide to take off a few years?


I can’t remember if there was one defining moment. I don’t think so. I think I just was taking inventory of my life. Everything was about going from one professional obligation to the next. That’s what I call them now, when they should have been exciting opportunities or life adventures. Like laughing, driving to Sony, because Tom Cruise is there. When you have nothing to go home to, no one to celebrate those things with, it’s time to maybe reassess and figure out what you’re not doing right. I had made so many promises to myself about things that I wanted to explore, things I wanted to try and how I would like to grow as a person that I had made no time for. And I thought, “That’s enough. Because I don’t want to be this person 10 years from now. I want to become more of who I’m supposed to be.”


Are you in love?


Yes.


Do you love to talk about it publicly?


[Laughs] Can’t you tell?


Okay, who’s your favorite guitarist?


Oh, that’s a good one. Hmm, let me see. There are a lot of them. Jimi Hendrix was really, really good.


His name is Doyle, and I’m happy for you.


Thank you very much!


What else do you want to say about your life today?


Haven’t we said enough? Are you still awake?


Congratulations on Bridget Jones’s Baby!


Oh, thanks very much. This was a fun one. But back to Texas Chainsaw Massacre