My
Fair Lady By Emma Cochrane, Empire - May 2001
Living in London (5 mths). Learning an accent (ugh).
Conquering the critics (v.g.). Renée Zellweger takes Empire exclusively
through Bridget Jones's Diary... Mark, long-term driver to the stars, is sitting in the
reception of Working Title Films in London waiting for Renée Zellweger.
She's holed up in Notting Hill executive producer Eric Fellner's office
talking about her latest film, Bridget Jones's Diary, while outside Mark
runs through the list of Hollywood actors he considers worthwhile. Uma,
for instance, was lovely, invited him around to visit the day after
she'd had her baby; Bill (as in Murray), a top bloke, who not only
invited Mark out to his house, but also greeted him at the airport -
complete with embarrassing hand-written sign. And then, there's Renée,
who he's had the pleasure of knowing since she landed the role of the
UK's premiere '90s diarist last year, and she's a whole other level of
nice. They're off to Kensington next, to the swanky movie star hang-out
of Boots. "She just loves Boots," explains Mark. As
Mark is chatting, a blonde wanders past and greets Empire with the
words, "Hi, I’m hungry. I’m going to get a biscuit. Do you want
a biscuit? Well, I’m getting you one anyway." She marches off
down the corridor, pony-tailed hair swinging, and returns minutes later
with a bowl of Fruitibix cereal. "This was all I could find... I
guessed you wouldn't want it..." She's 5' 5 ", of slim build,
wearing blue jeans and a blue sweater, and it takes a moment to realise
that this unassuming beauty, conducting an interview between mouthfuls
of cereal, is Renée Zellweger. The same Renée Zellweger that stole Tom
Cruise's heart in Jerry Maguire (1996), got chopped up by Tim Roth in
Deceiver (1997), cried with Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998) and,
more recently, picked up a Golden Globe for her performance as Nurse
Betty. Thinking this is going to be a breeze, Empire starts
with some basic biographical facts and straightaway hits a stumbling
block. "What's your middle name?" "Ur-uh," she
shakes her head, mouth still full. "I don't know you well enough to
tell you." And this is what lies at the heart of Zellweger: she can
offer to feed you, she'll happily sing the praises of Empire and she can
even hug you (as she does at the end of the interview), but certain
things are sacred; and that's what makes her interesting. Cameron Crowe was well aware of this. He took a
freeze-frame of Tom Cruise's reaction to Zellweger during one of the
early Jerry Maguire rehearsals that summed it up perfectly.
"Intrigue and bewilderment," laughs Zellweger, who still has
the photo at home. "It was pinned to my refrigerator, but now I
keep it in a more special place." After she wrapped Jerry Maguire,
Cruise promised that if ever she needed anything, all she had to do was
call. She hasn't picked up the phone yet, "but I know he's
there", she smiles. "He's such an angel. I can't say enough
nice things about him - not as an actor trying to make your friend look
good, but true, nice things. He's a good man." Houston-born Zellweger began her acting career by
default. She joined the drama club aged 11 because her older brother
Drew was already a member "and I had to do everything he did".
Drew gave up after high school and became a marketing executive, but
Zellweger remained drawn to acting, even after taking a degree in
English at the University Of Texas, and at 21 she landed her first job:
a commercial for the American Beef Council. "It was meant to be a
turn-of-the-century picnic at a girls' school." So there was the
then-vegetarian Zellweger, kitted out in a beret, skirt and jumper in
the 100° heat of Texas, trying to sell beef to the good people of
Japan. "And I loved it. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever
done, and I loved the day. I loved the process of creating, the whole
thing." In
the early days she shared an agent with fellow Texan Matthew
McConaughey, and they were often sent up for the same things - hence the
early dual career joys of The Return Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(1994) and Dazed And Confused (1993) - but eventually she moved out to
the West Coast with her dog Dylan, and bigger offers started to come her
way. The one thing she did avoid was the press circuit that went
hand-in-hand with publicising these movies. "There's
a couple of times when I wished I’d gone out and talked more about
films we've done, but because I’m so puritanical about letting my work
speak for itself, that would sometimes get in the way in terms of being
able to share it with people." So for the record, she'd now like to
recommend: Love And A 45 (1994), a Tarantino-esque road movie; The Whole
Wide World (1996), the true-life tale of aspiring writer Novalyne Price,
whose romance with Conan The Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard was a scandal in its time; and Price Of Rubies ( 1998), in which she romanced
Hassidic Jew Christopher Eccleston. "Now I feel really bad,"
she reflects. "I didn't really do anything for Jerry Maguire or One
True Thing. But you know what? I decided Nurse Betty is a little film
that everybody worked so hard on, that I wanted to say, 'Look what we
did.'" And look they did, which is why Zellweger is here today: to
talk about her latest, Bridget Jones's Diary. Zellweger is all too aware of every piece that has been
written about her as Bridget Jones, because for three months it was her
job to cut out and file every column inch that appeared about the movie.
Some bright spark - read, sadist - thought it would be a 'really good
idea' to give Zellweger a job in the press office at Macmillan - the
publisher that owns the rights to Bridget Jones's Diary - since our
diarist has this very job. So, under the name Bridget Cavendish, and
using her rapidly improving Sloaney accent, Zellweger went to work from
nine to five every day, and learnt about a world she'd previously
avoided "because it shouldn't be floating around your head". "You bave to make little notes on the
clippings," she recalls, "so I’d be like, 'Not true',
'Complete crap', 'Absolutely not', 'Check your sources'..." But that wasn't all. "I was working four jobs. I
was doing the body job, the dialogue job, the
go-to-rehearsals-and-learn-your-lines job and the Macmillan job. Then by
the time I got home there was more work to do, like watching EastEnders
so I would know what people were talking about. There was no time to
make friends so it was very lonely. And very lonely to be not familiar
with any part of yourself." The
"body job" was the one that attracted the most attention. For
the naturally slim and active Zellweger, adding two stone to her body
weight was no mean feat. The idea wasn't to make her fat, just to bring
her closer to the nine-stone mark of the novel's heroine. "It was
mathematical," she explains. "You go to the doctor and he
looks at you and weighs you, and he does these doodles on a piece of
paper and says, 'Do you wanna add this or do you wanna add that? Well,
if you want to add that, add two eggs to your breakfast and a protein
chocolate ice cream shake an hour after that, then a candy bar before
lunch. Eat an entire pizza at lunch, plus a salad with Thousand Island
dressing on it and a chocolate shake, a piece of pie for dessert and
right after that, in the afternoon, I want you to have another protein
weight-gain shake, and another candy bar, and then I need you to eat a
piece of cake at tea. Then I need you to have linguini with white clam
sauce and extra Parmesan, with as much bread and butter as you can stuff
down with every one of those meals. And have some wine. Or some
Guinness, because that will do it. Then some dessert and then before you
go to bed...' So imagine that," she continues, "because
there's no sleeping. You're on your eighth coffee because you have to
stay awake and get through whatever, and then they bring in the
chocolate whipped mousse... You've shot all night long and you're really
tired, and you'd love to get five hours' sleep but you can only get
three because you have to get up and learn your lines. You do what you
have to do to legitimise the character you're playing." For
the record, all the food, all the accent work, all the absorbing British
culture has worked. On screen it takes just seconds to forget that
Zellweger is, as Eric Fellner rightly surmises, "this Texan
chick". Inevitably, though, some fans' favourite scenes have not
made the final cut. "We shot a lot," explains Zellweger,
"but you can't make people sit in their chair for five hours. I
especially miss a New Year's Eve party because it was hysterical to
shoot." Which leads us neatly to Zellweger's main bone of
contention with the film - the "stinky poo cigarettes" that
Bridget chain-smokes. Zellweger is a non-smoker, and in fact wasn't
allowed to smoke real cigarettes because they speed up the metabolism -
undoing all that hard-won weight gain. So they gave her herbal ones. "They were so offensive. We were filming a scene
in the Tate Modern, there were hundred of extras, and that was all fine
until I lit up my stinky-poo cigarette and the whole room turned to
figure out where the smell was coming from." Other things she'd like to destroy include "that
red diary and that stupid pen". Although she didn't have to write
all the diaries (over 100 were eventually used), she did have to provide
numerous samples of her handwriting and fill in anything that was to be
seen on screen. "As for my bunny costume," she says of her
memorable attire during a particularly embarrassing party scene, "I
wanted to throw it in the Thames by the time we were done..." But, with the print finally in the can, Zellweger is
free to enjoy herself - and she is indeed heading to Boots. "I’m
addicted," she confesses, "I love Boots. We've got great
pharmacies in America, but boy, there's something about Boots The
Chemist you can't beat." Spoken like a true Bridget Jones. BRIDGET JONES SAVED MY LIFE First
there was Shirley Valentine, tapping into my morbid fear of becoming a
shaggy-permed Liverpudlian housewife who talks to the wall. Thankfully
Pauline Collins broke out of her potato-peeling rut, and I've carried
her story in my heart both as cautionary tale and inspirational mantra
since 1989. But
then along comes Bridget Jones. I could have merely chortled and
over-identified like everyone else, but with only three letters
separating us and the fact that we both havea mother called Pamela, some
brow-scrunching reading between the (paranoia-affirming) lines seemed to
be called for. In
between the pages of Fielding's beautifully observed satire, there's a
wonderful sense of 'I can't believe she said that - I do that/think
that/pluck that!' I marvel at the women sloshing down the Chardonnay in
their eagerness to be the 'authentic' Bridget Jones, but there is much
more to Bridget than a caricature of turn-of-the-century new womanhood.
She is as instructive as a role model can be - the one thing she's
taught me is that life's too short to count calories/ciggies/cellulite
nodules (yup, Bridget Jones's Diary is the most cunningly-disguised
self-help book on the market!). But until worldwide realisation dawns,
there's the movie. And of course there'll be a stampede for seats - it's
not every day you get to go to the movies and see yourself on the big
screen. Belinda Jones BRIDGET JONES RUINED MY LIFE The thing about a diary is that it holds secrets. Which
is why all men should sneak a look at Bridget Jones's Diary (or at
least, see the film - it's only 90 minutes). Women
have always felt the answers to the world's ills – or at least, an
ailing relationship - can befound between the covers of a book (men just
think it's between the covers). They'll devour the trendy theories just
so that, during a row, they can throw it back at you. Preferably in
hardback. Therefore, when girlfriends began chucking a volume by
Independent columnist Helen Fielding at hapless boyfriends, it was time
for said blokes to pick up the pieces, turnover a new page and...
empathise. So you look inside Bridget Jones's Diary - any format - and
what do you find? That for all the modern trappings – trendy job,
loose morals - the old, old clichés still apply: all men are bastards.
Except one. You see, the appeal of Bridget Jones is simple. It's not:
'She's just like me, underappreciated, misunderstood, (ever-so-slightly)
overweight.' It's: 'She's just like me, underappreciated, misunderstood,
(ever-so-slightly) overweight... and she lands her dream guy. No, she
has two gorgeous guys fighting over her!' Ladies, be fair. How can we
compete with Mark Darcy? He's not just a fictional character, he's a
fictional spin on a fictiona Jane Austen character. He. Does. Not.
Exist. But try telling your girlfriend and she’ll throw the book at
you. Colin Kennedy WHO
THE HELL IS SHARON MAGUIRE? A quick flick through Helen Fielding's acknowledgements in Bridget Jones's Diary and the name Sharon Maguire is innocuous enough amongst the litany of thank yous. Yet five years after the book's release, Maguire is directing the movie version of the very sartie book. If this was not exactly nepotism - she's a respected documentary and commercials filmmaker - her claim for the director's chair was helped by the fact that she was the real-life inspiration for Bridget's mates Shazzer (told you so) and Jude. "We were having a really good time, going out partying," reflects Maguire. "At the same time, we were anxious about why we hadn't settled down yet. Bet we felt we shouldn't be striving for male approval because we're feminists. That contradiction was the thing Helen so brilliantly captured. There are a lot of women out there who've got their careers, their independence - but they're constantly thinking, 'I just want to be in love, I want a man...'" Which insight made her the ideal candidate to capture her on screen. "I knew the world so well," she laughs, "because it's mine." Ian Freer |