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Actress
underwent weighty changes By Gary Dowell, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service – April 11, 2001 Actress Renee
Zellweger has had some tricky roles in the past a Jewish woman experiencing a
crisis of faith ("A Price Above Rubies"), a small-town waitress
suffering a break from reality ("Nurse Betty") and the girlfriend of
pulp-literature bad boy Robert E. Howard ("The Whole Wide World").
But she really stuck her neck out as the title character in the film
adaptation of "Bridget Jones's Diary." When Helen Fielding's
novel hit the stands in the United States and England in 1998, it was an
instant success, and Bridget became a "cultural icon," the
quintessential '90s woman trying to balance a career and a love life while
contending with ideas about how a modern woman should look and behave. English journalists,
fans of the novel and its author took exception to the idea that an American
actress one from Texas, no less could portray their beloved Bridget. Fears of
shelling out pounds sterling only to hear "Y'all want to go to the pub
for a pint of bitter?" abounded. But those skeptics
may soon breathe a sigh of relief: Zellweger is the ideal choice for the
klutzy and awkward yet spunky and unconventional heroine of the new movie,
which opens Friday. The charming combination of bubbly goofiness (in a good
way, mind you), irrepressible charm and sweet earnestness that she's used in
the past suits Bridget to a tee. "It was
(involved), and it was pretty extraordinary at the same time, because the more
involved it is, the more creatively satisfying it is, I suppose," says
Zellweger, who had to gain 20 pounds and master a British accent for the role.
During a telephone interview, her Texas twang is more noticeable than any
leftover vestiges of an English accent, but a few tiny Britishisms
occasionally slip through. The possibility of
playing Bridget was "a great shock, actually," says Zellweger, who
had already read the book when her manager mentioned the role. Soon, she was off to
London, where "we sat down for a few days and we all kind of tested the
waters to see if it was possible that I might not destroy this character in
the translation, and we went from there." It marked the end of
a two-year search for an actress who represented the embodiment of Bridget, as
well as the beginning of a lot of preparation and dedication. Zellweger spent six
months in London making the transformation from Yank to Brit under the
tutelage of Barbara Berkery, the dialect guru who helped Gwyneth Paltrow pass
as English in "Sliding Doors" and "Shakespeare in Love."
She then went undercover, sort of, on the staff of the London publishing house
Picador, where she pretended to be a relative of the boss doing a temp job.
Actually, it was to get a handle on Bridget's daily activities as a publicist
as well as practice the middle-class English accent so necessary to the role. Still, many were
skeptical at first. "Well, me too, just by the way," adds Zellweger.
"I just knew we had some work to do and there was time to do it. It
really, really quickly became our personal experience. It was about the
day-to-day challenges and the work and 'Let's do it, let's do the work and use
it to create this really neat thing.'" One of Zellweger's
challenges was to match Bridget physically. At 129 pounds, Bridget is barely
chunky, but she obsesses about her weight. She also smokes like a chimney and
drinks like a fish, all of which she details in her diary. "It was just
part of it, part of bringing her to life. And for me it was essential. I
wanted her to look like she looked in my head when I read the book. It was
part of the process." There may be a large
cultural difference between them, but Zellweger thinks she and Bridget have a
lot in common. "I totally, completely, thoroughly understand the wax
strip in the bathroom experience. I know that well," she jokes, referring
to the art of leg waxing. "I know the self-conscious, 'I'm absolutely
going to destroy this moment' public-speaking experience. I know all about
trying to find balance between personal and professional life. I understand
that journey of self-discovery that she experiences in the book and in this
film. Who can't relate to that?" As for the pressure
of living up to the expectations of fans of the novel, Zellweger did her best
to put it out of her mind, focusing instead on how to bring to life a
self-absorbed single woman in her 30s trying to work the kinks out of her
life. "Your world gets
really small really quickly when you start to make a film, and again it
becomes about the pressure that you put on yourself to not be the weak link in
the project." During the course of
her misadventures, Bridget (and by extension Zellweger) experiences the thrill
of being torn between Hugh Grant, who plays Bridget's womanizing boss, Daniel
Cleaver, and Colin Firth as Mark Darcy (basically reprising his role as Jane
Austen's hero in the BBC miniseries "Pride and Prejudice.") And throughout it
all, Zellweger manages to mix her charm, innocence and seeming lack of
worldliness with a feminist perspective, a talent that has served her well in
previous movies. She also evokes the blend of strength and vulnerability that
worked so well for her as the objects of desire in "Nurse Betty" and
"Jerry Maguire." "I so did not feel like the object of anyone's desire (during filming)," she says. "Not so much because of the physical change but because I was so out of my element." Zellweger says that
assuming the identity of Bridget put an unusual spin on her life, but not
necessarily an unpleasant one. "I felt awkward
in my personal time. I didn't really recognize myself or my life or the place
I lived. It was a completely isolating experience, and while it was creatively
so exciting and fulfilling, it was still alienating to me. Now, if you're
asking in a roundabout way what it was like to work with Colin and Hugh, it
was not a bad day at the office."
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