Renée Zellweger may be a little embarrassed about it, but she’s got a pretty heaving awards shelf at home. The Bridget Jones star won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress for her role as Judy Garland in Judy recently, collecting an award that may well just sit next to her 2004 Best Supporting Actress Oscar. And – perhaps – her 2020 Best Actress gong too.
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Born and raised in Texas, the multi-award-winning actress moved to LA in 1993 and – within two years – had snagged her first major role in the cult movie Empire Records. It was to be a breakthrough performance and the start of a truly glittering career.
Here, the actress opens up to us about awards success, what she learned from playing Judy Garland and why everyone has so much love still for Bridget Jones…
“It never occurred to me,” she admitted when we asked if she had ever thought about playing Judy Garland before.. “I never thought that it would be something that someone would propose.”
“I don’t consider myself a performer really,” she continued. “I’ve never done a live performance before and I didn’t consider myself a singer of those sorts of songs. I didn’t really have that vocal stamina. But I was always a fan. She was always around the house and playing on the turntable and on a reel-to-reel.”
We asked the Cold Mountain star when she realised that she wanted to be an actress. “In college on the set of a student film we were making,” she replied.
“We were on a set in the middle of nowhere and I just got the bug. I didn’t understand why this felt very important to me, but I just couldn’t wait for the next opportunity.”
When she won Best Actress at the 2001 Golden Globes for the film Nurse Betty, she was in the bathroom when Hugh Grant read out her name. We’d heard that Renée was in there because she was hiding. It turns out that wasn’t just malicious Hollywood gossip, either. She really was hiding.
“I was! This was the early days. I’d just finished Bridget Jones and I’d gone through a break-up. Then it’s time to put on a dress and go and do your thing and you don’t even feel like putting on jeans to go to the coffee shop.”
“During the ceremony, I thought, ‘I can just go for a little walk and I’ll just go to the bathroom for a second. I’m going to put on some lipstick.’ So, I went to the bathroom and I’m putting my lipstick on and I hear this man screaming, ‘Hey come on!’ I think the moment would have come and gone if sweet Hugh Grant hadn’t stretched out his screen time.”
We asked the actress what it was she thought we all still love about Bridget Jones as a character. Even after so many years.
“What’s not to love about a woman who has so much joy and who fearlessly goes forward despite her self-doubt?” she answers. “And she finds self-acceptance at different spurts in her life, like we all do…”
“Who wouldn’t relate to a person who is imperfect but still has triumphs all the time?!”
You can read our full interview with Renée in this week’s print edition of OK!
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