The Return of Renee

With Bridget Jones’s Baby, her first movie in 6 years, Renée Zellweger is back in the spotlight. Finally healthy, happy and in love, she opens up about why she took time off, the changes in her life (and appearance) and her journey from Texas to Hollywood

- Jess Cagle

I first met Renée Zellweger 20 years ago. She was an unknown actress from Katy, Texas, but she had scored the lead female role opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. A few weeks before the movie’s release, the studio took her around to meet magazine editors in New York City. She was charming, funny and smart. But I wondered, even then, how this sweet, somewhat shy young woman would adjust to life in the public eye. When she was a girl—the daughter of immigrant parents—she had dreamed of becoming a writer, not an actress. And the vulnerability that would make her such a relatable, likable movie star isn’t manufactured. She lacks the thick skin you need to enjoy celebrity despite its downsides. Stardom came fast and furious: two hit Bridget Jones films; Chicago, in which she was both funny and shattering as Roxie Hart (and she could sing!); Cold Mountain, which earned her an Oscar.

But the past decade has been one of challenges and change. Her 2005 marriage to Kenny Chesney was quickly annulled. She made several movies back to-back, most of which didn’t connect with audiences. Feeling “depleted” and aware that “my personal life had taken a backseat,” she took a few years off. She began writing again. She fell in love with guitarist-singer and old friend Doyle Bramhall II. She says she learned to take care of herself. Since she returned to the spotlight two years ago, there has been endless speculation about whether she had plastic surgery while she was away. Recently, in a Huffington Post essay, she criticized the speculation as sexist and said, “I did not make a decision to alter my appearance and have surgery on my eyes.” That statement is open to interpretation: It could mean she has zero interest in sharing her beauty regimen or that she’s just unwilling to give in to the mean-spirited judgments of the Internet.