| Renée Zellweger | |
|---|---|
Zellweger at Berlinale, February 2009 |
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| Born | Renée Kathleen Zellweger April 25, 1969 Katy, Texas, U.S |
| Occupation | Actress, producer, voice actress |
| Years active | 1992–present |
| Spouse | Kenny Chesney (May–September, 2005; annulled) |
Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) (which she reprised in its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)), and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).
She has won three Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009,[1] and established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses as of 2007.[2]
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Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas, a western suburb of Houston. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au, St. Gallen,[3] Switzerland, and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business.[4] Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian and grew up in Kirkenes og Ekkerøy,[5][6] and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States in order to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas.[7][8][9] Zellweger has described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians".[9]
While in junior high school Zellweger actively took part in several sports, including soccer, basketball, baseball and football.[9] She attended Katy High School, where she was a cheerleader, a gymnast, a member of speech team,[10] and a drama club member. Zellweger acted in several school plays and was voted the "Dream Date" of her class before graduating from high school in 1987. After high school, she went to the University of Texas at Austin to major in English language.[5] At the beginning, she took a drama class because she needed a fine arts credit to complete her degree, but the experience made her appreciate how much she loved acting.[7] During this time, she supported herself by taking jobs as a waitress in Austin, Texas.[7][11] She said in 2009 she earned her Screen Actors Guild card doing a Coors Light beer commercial while in college.[12] Also while in college, she did "a bit part ... as a local hire" in the Austin-filmed horror-comedy My Boyfriend's Back, playing "the girl in the beauty shop, maybe two lines. But the beauty shop [scene] got cut."[12]
Zellweger graduated from college with a BA degree in English in 1991. Her first job after graduation was working in a beef commercial, while simultaneously starting to audition for roles around Houston.[7]
While still in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several films. One was A Taste for Killing (1992),[5] followed by a role in the ABC miniseries Murder in the Heartland (1993).[5] The following year, she appeared in Reality Bites (1994), the directorial debut of Ben Stiller, and in the biographical film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen.
Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror story Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family, led by the iconic Leatherface.[7] Her next movie was Love and a .45 (1994), in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles, winning roles in the films Empire Records (1995) and The Whole Wide World (1996).[7] Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character.[7]
Zellweger later won acclaim in One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman.[7] The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards, but she was in the bathroom when future co-star Hugh Grant announced her name.[7] Zellweger later protested: "I had lipstick on my teeth!"[13]
In 2001 Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. The choice came amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight.[7] During casting Zellweger was told she was too skinny to play the chubby Bridget, so she quickly embarked on gaining the required weight and learning an English accent. She gained 20 pounds in order to complete her transformation to Bridget Jones.[14] Her dramatic weight fluctuations became the subject of much media interest. Her performance as Bridget received praise from critics with Stephen Holden of The New York Times commenting, "Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real."[14] Along with receiving voice coaching to fine-tune her English accent, part of Zellweger's preparations involved spending three weeks working undercover in a "work experience placement" for British publishing firm Picador in Victoria, London.[7][15] As a result of her considerable efforts to effect author Helen Fielding's character, Zellweger caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and won her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination.[7]
In 2002 she starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander. She played an actress in the film, and a clip from her role in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was shown as she discussed her career with the main character, Astrid Magnussen. The same year, she appeared as Roxie Hart in the critically acclaimed musical film Chicago, directed by Rob Marshall, co-starring Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Zellweger received positive reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle's web site SFGate commented, "Zellweger is a joy to watch, with marvelous comic timing and, in her stage numbers, a commanding presence."[16] The Washington Post noted that even though Zellweger couldn't dance well in real life, the audience "wouldn't know it from this movie, in which she dances up a storm."[17] As a result she earned her second Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award.[7]
In 2004 Zellweger received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Zellweger since has starred in the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, lent her voice to the DreamWorks animated features Shark Tale and Bee Movie, and starred in the 2005 Ron Howard film Cinderella Man opposite Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti. On May 24, 2005, Zellweger received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She produced and appeared in Miss Potter, based on the life story of acclaimed author Beatrix Potter, with Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor, released in December 2006.
Zellweger was awarded the Women in Film Crystal award in 2007.[18] In 2008, she starred in the western Appaloosa with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen and the period comedy Leatherheads with fellow Oscar-winner George Clooney.
In 2008 she produced a film, Living Proof, starring Harry Connick Jr., about the true story of Dr. Denny Slamon. The film, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, premiered in October 2008 on Lifetime Television.[19]
In 2009 she starred alongside Chris Noth and Kevin Bacon in the feature film My One and Only,[20] as well as in the film New in Town, a comedy about a corporate executive from Miami who is sent to New Ulm, Minnesota, to oversee a small manufacturing company making minimal profits producing and selling pudding. She also had a cameo role in the animated film Monsters vs. Aliens.
Renee has expressed a strong interest in reprising her role as Bridget Jones in the planned third installment of the "Bridget Jones" film series.
Starting in 2002 Zellweger dated The White Stripes singer, Jack White, for two years. They broke up after schedule demands kept them apart.[21]
On May 9, 2005, Zellweger married singer, Kenny Chesney, in a ceremony at the island of St. John.[22] On September 15, 2005, they announced their plans for an annulment. Zellweger cited "fraud" as the reason in the related papers.[23] After media scrutiny of her use of the word "fraud", she qualified the use of the term, stating it was "simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character."[23]
In September 2010 it was reported that Zellweger and actor Bradley Cooper had been in a relationship for over a year.[24] On March 18, 2011, People Magazine announced that the two had broken off their relationship.[25]
Zellweger and Marc Forster took part in the 2005 HIV prevention campaign of the Swiss federal health department.[26]
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