Up with the Joneses

Daily Mail - October 30, 2004

They said an American could never play fictional British heroine Bridget Jones, but Renée Zellweger wowed audiences as the plump singleton. Now an Oscar winner, she tells Lina Das why Bridget's even bigger in the sequel, and co-stars Hugh Grant and Colin Firth reveal that their rivalry is just as real off-screen.

There is an uproarious moment in the new movie Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason where our eponymous heroine
is seen sporting a spectacularly unflattering pair of large pants. It is an echo of the movie's prequel, Bridget Jones's Diary, where Bridget goes to bed with the dastardly Daniel Cleaver, who, much to everyone's surprise - especially Bridget's - actually loves her in the offending undergarments. For the actress who had to don them, Renée Zellweger, it was not, as she would admit, the most glamorous moment of her career, but it is a testimony to her lack of vanity as an actress that she donned those baggy bloomers with such gusto. As Helen Fielding, the author of the two Bridget Jones books says, 'Renée is great in the part because she's not afraid of looking a mess, as well as looking fabulous, and she manages to convey all of Bridget's warmth and humanity.'

Sitting in New York's Ritz-Carlton hotel now, Renée is doing all she can not to look too fabulous. Swathed in a woollen shawl with her hair - dyed brown for her role opposite Russell Crowe in The Cinderella Man - tied back in a ponytail, she is nervy and fidgety, although friendly to a fault. The ample curves, so proudly displayed in The Edge of Reason, have gone, and she has returned to her usual slender shape. She speaks in a soft Texan drawl, making one wonder how she ever enunciated Bridget's much admired clipped English tones so perfectly.

In The Edge Of Reason, Renée reprises her role as the hapless Bridget. She has a new screen boyfriend, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), and appears to be blissfully happy, and yet we know it can't last. With über-rogue Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) re-entering the scene as her colleague, and a disastrous trip to Thailand that sees Bridget banged up in jail, The Edge Of Reason is another tortuous ride through our heroine's confused soul.

'It was a new kind of challenge to watch Bridget enter the next phase of her life and become a bit wiser,' says Renée. 'It's what has made this role so enjoyable, and has helped me recognise my own imperfections and to laugh at them in the way she does.

Bridget is just like all of us; perpetually moving on, always growing a little wiser, but never letting go of that special something that makes her so... Bridget. The film's about the realities of falling in love with somebody and realising how simple it really is and, basically, that is good enough for all of us.' For Renée, being Bridget was also a licence to binge out. Much was made of the fact that for the first film she had to slap an extra 25lbs onto her tiny frame in order to play the wellpadded, weight-obsessed Bridget, and when I ask if she was worried about piling on the pounds once more (she was reportedly paid extra, on top of her [pounds sterling] 6 million fee, for every pound of flesh she put on for the role, and does actually seem even curvier in the second film, although her legs still seem enviably thin) - I can almost hear her heart sink.

'Not so much, but near the end of that process, when I saw the movie Super Size Me, I got a little concerned. It isn't really healthy to gain and lose so much weight in such a short time, but maybe it was a bit easier this time to lose the weight. I went back and forward to Canada for my new film The Cinderella Man and I was probably on three planes a week, so it helped not to eat the terrible airline food. But, to be honest, I don't want to contribute to the notion that being one shape is better than being the other.

'When I gained the weight, I got into Bridget's character again. It happened so fast that I didn't feel fat. I felt uncomfortable in my skin, but not in my mind, and I didn't hate myself. I felt the same person. It just really highlights how ridiculous our obsession with that five or ten pounds is, and I really don't understand where that comes from, that crazy idea that it matters if your body is slightly different. Being Bridget Jones was actually a very positive experience for me. Being able to fill out a dress got me positive comments from men more frequently than I do now!' So why lose the weight again? 'Honey,' she breathes, somewhat exasperated, 'because that's my size - I'm a little girl. It was a sad day when I had to retire my C-cup to the drawer, but it wasn't because I felt pressure to be a certain weight in Hollywood, or anything like that.' Both her admirers, Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver, relish Bridget's curves anyway.

Grant as Cleaver is wonderfully snakey, and Bridget Jones' fans will be pleased to know that the somewhat girly fight that he and Firth had during the first film has been updated in the second. Says Firth, 'The funny thing is that Hugh and I have only ever worked with each other in these fight sequences. But we made the decision right away not to stage anything. We simply showed up that morning and started pulling each other's hair, kicking at one another, flailing about and complaining, and it all came completely naturally to me, I have to say.

'When we did do the fight three years ago, I think Hugh was then spending more time on his fitness and body. It's remarkable the difference three years can make, really. It was certainly easier for me because he was much fleshier, and the contours were much softer - it was more like wrestling my grandmother.  Hugh complained all the time that I was hurting him and giving him bruises. Probably, if we ever did do it again, I'd advise him to get in a bit of training.' Grant counters with, 'Colin now has to spend even more time in the trailer, poor old boy, he's losing it a little. I think he'd be the first to agree he's gone a bit jowly and the neck's gone a bit scrawny. Middleclass Englishmen don't fight at all really, and when they do it's a pretty pitiful sight - girly, messy, unbutch - and that's what we were trying to capture.'

The constant ribbing between the two male leads had a positive affect on the cast and crew, including the film's director, Beeban Kidron. She says, 'Colin and Hugh, from day one to the end, absolutely dissed each other about their sexual prowess, their acting ability, their bodies, and actually, for the rest of us, it was great fun to watch.' Of course, trying to get Renée to divulge who out of Firth and Grant is the better kisser, elicts a politician's evasions. 'Oh, I've been asked that question for years and years, but I'm not going to answer,' she blushes. 'Love scenes are always weird and any kind of forced intimacy that you usually reserve for people you love is awkward as hell. It takes so much concentration, too, because when you're on the set, there could not be anything less romantic. You're kissing while trying not to fall over the cables on the floor. What I will say is that I was spoilt rotten going to work every day with Hugh and Colin. I like them both very much. They're both very open, warm and generous, and their witticisms come from how acutely observant they are.' Now, it seems unthinkable that anyone else should have even
been considered for the role, but when it originally emerged that the Texan Renée would be playing such a thoroughly British heroine, eyebrows were raised. One producer sneered that 'it would be like choosing a British actor to play a quintessentially American role such as Tom Sawyer', and even Bridget's creator, Helen Fielding, was quoted as saying, 'I'm very insulted that nobody asked me', apparently preferring Kate Winslet for the part. Now, though, Helen says, 'I deliberately didn't say who I wanted and the only person I did insist on having in the film was Colin Firth. But Renée is great and it's quite interesting now to look back on how up in arms everyone was about an American playing a British role.' Not that Renée herself didn't have her own doubts.

'I was terrified,' she agrees. 'I have a lot of affection for the character and I didn't want to do something that would disappoint people and compromise her. People would come up to me in the street and say things like, "I am Bridget Jones and I love Bridget Jones," meaning, "You'd better not screw this up for us." I wanted to make sure that doing the sequel would be worthwhile.

Sequels are repeats of what you've done before to some degree, but this was a new chapter. I hoped that Bridget Jones would still, in some way, have the resonance of the Lucille Ball character I grew up with.' Her co-stars also confess to initial cold feet about the sequel. Hugh Grant said that the idea of doing a follow-up might be like putting on a pair of wet swimming trunks.

When it came to the point, however, they both profess to having enjoyed the experience - not least because of the presence of Renée in the role.

Playing Bridget was, Renée concedes, 'a massive challenge - to find Bridget, her voice and look. I felt loud and inappropriately direct. I felt clumsy.' I get the impression she frequently feels gauche anyway. 'I'm not at all comfortable with the movie-star element of my profession,' she agrees. 'I have a lot of help from nice people in my life whom I can turn to, about the gowns and the shoes, and things like that, but there is no help there at all when I open my mouth.' She illustrates this with a story about her latest project, Shark Tale, an animated film in which she voices a fish. 'When we had the opening for Shark Tale recently, I was asked what kind of fish I would like to be, and such a dumb question will inevitably lead to a dumb answer. If only I could have been clever and said something like, "A fish you can't eat", but instead I kept babbling until the lady who asked the question fell asleep.' Renée shakes her head, mortified. 'It was one of those moments where you think to yourself, "Just close your mouth and go on to the next interview."' Certainly, she gives the impression of being about as un-Hollywood as they come. Unlike Bridget, who speaks before engaging her brain, Renée will consider every question carefully before giving a sometimes inconclusive answer, and she is guarded about her private life. Her relationship with her most recent boyfriend, musician Jack White, began when White, frontman of the White Stripes, played her husband in Cold Mountain.

Rumours abounded earlier this year that they had split, allegedly due to Renée's enforced Bridget Jones weight gain, and although they were subsequently seen together, Renée claimed this month that 'there's nobody in my life right now. I'm not interested at the moment.' She has been similarly tight-lipped about a past link with Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney (apparently just a friendship) and her relationship with her Me, Myself & Irene co-star, Jim Carrey, whom she dated for a year and was said to be engaged to after being spotted buying a [pounds sterling] 50,000 diamond ring.

'But I've never been proposed to or engaged,' she protests. 'Never, never, never. Not even close. Am I on a quest for a husband?

Well, I don't look at it that way. I don't think it's something you need to do by a certain age [she is 35]. I didn't grow up thinking that the guy was going to ride up on a horse, and I was going to have this kind of wedding and, by the time I was this age, I was going to have the house and the kids.

I just didn't have those prerequisites for happiness. I've never been an active partner-seeker; when it happens it's a lovely thing and I believe in it, and I've seen how happy my parents are. But I don't think that happiness is contingent upon finding it.' She does, however, admit to hoping to find someone 'with a heart; someone who has compassion and has a sense of humour', and says she thinks she may be ready for marriage if the right person came along. 'I think now I could trust myself that I would make wise decisions.

Motherhood? Who knows? We'll see. Personally, I feel like I have been a mum for 15 years to my dog because every decision in my life revolved around whether it was good for her. Sadly, she died last year.' Her own childhood was a charmed one. She grew up in Katy, Texas, with her brother, Andrew, 37, and her parents Emil and Kjellfrid.

Emil's parents hailed from Switzerland, but left after World War II, moving first to Australia and then to the U.S., and it was on the boat crossing to the States that Renée's mother and father met. They have been married for just over 40 years and Renée is still very close to both of them.

Her mother, Kjellfrid, is Norwegian, and saw her home town burned to the ground by Nazi invaders during the war.

'They had to struggle,' Renée says of her parents, 'not just to get by, but to survive. And that's something most of our generation haven't experienced, they don't know what it's like to have your town invaded and burned down. I was always grateful to have that knowledge that my parents passed on to me.

It was good to know that, even though on the map the U.S. is in the middle, it's not the centre of the world. And there were a lot of things that my parents couldn't understand.

My mum could never understand why it would be a drag to go to school, when she'd been desperate to go to school and couldn't because it had been burned down.' It was at school that Renée discovered her love of acting, then at the University of Texas, she took acting classes while also trying to forge a career. Small roles in Reality Bites and Empire Records, not to mention the larger one in the turkey The Return Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ensured her rise was rapid. But it was her part in the Tom Cruise film, Jerry Maguire, that really put her on the Hollywood map. Since then, she has won three Golden Globes and three Oscar nominations for her roles in Bridget Jones's Diary, Chicago and Cold Mountain - which she won.

She can do both cool and kooky to perfection. When she won a Golden Globe for Nurse Betty, she had not expected to win and had nipped into the Ladies during the ceremony when the announcement was made, struggling onto the stage just in time. And who can forget the premiere of Chicago two years ago when, in a Bridget Jonesy fashion, she was photographed planting a rather suspect smacker on her co-star Richard Gere, in front of his wife, Carey Lowell? But beneath the kookiness and the modesty ('I don't consider myself to be a great beauty'), there is undoubtedly a core of steel for her to have achieved so much in such a short time.

As well as The Cinderella Man, Renée is set to film a biopic of singer Janis Joplin - a fellow Texas belle. Who knows, maybe a third instalment in the Bridget Jones story will follow.

Author Helen Fielding is as yet undecided as to whether another Bridget Jones book is on its way ('I don't know yet. I don't want to churn another one out for the sake of it, as I think it's important to have integrity, but if I know what I want to say, I'll say it'), but if it does materialise, then Renée will certainly have the support of her co-stars. 'It's such a tough thing that she took on being Bridget Jones at all in the first place,' says Hugh Grant. 'To bring it off was a massive triumph of talent and incredible willpower as well, because in the first shoot she was very doughty and never complained, never moaned. She's still like that and she's a much bigger star now than she was making the first one.'

'She's equally down-to-earth and fabulous.' Firth is just as enthusiastic, describing her as, 'Hilarious, and very sweet and huggable.' He says that scenes which read flat on the pages of the novel 'suddenly came to life as either poignant and moving or as funny when I see her perform'. So Renée had better start working on those pizzas again, and of course get the C-cup bras back out of the drawer.