Profile: After feasting on Kit-Kat and doughnuts, the Oscar-winning actor is back playing Bridget Jones for an estimated $20m. But while she's large as life on screen, in real life she's now seen as skeletal, writes Shane Hegarty.
Here is a popular story about Renée Zellweger: when she won a Golden Globe in 2000, she was in the ladies' toilet when they called her name, and she only just struggled her way to the podium in time. It's probably a bit exaggerated, but it's the perfect Zellweger anecdote. It reflects a lightness of ego, a certain distance from Hollywood glamour and the humility of someone who didn't expect to win it in the first place. But more than all of that, there is a great Bridget Jones-ness to the episode, containing the delightful clumsiness intrinsic to the heroine she has brought to the screen. Although, if it was Bridget, as her fans might tell you, she would have stumbled to the stage with her ball gown tucked embarrassingly into her big knickers.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason comes to the screens this week and will be a sure-fire hit. It's worth remembering that when Zellweger was originally chosen to play the thirtysomething singleton, the news was greeted with dismay and thinly-veiled disgust from the British press, which couldn't see how some glamour-puss Hollywood starlet could possibly portray a Home Counties loser-in-love. It was accompanied with much "what's wrong with one of our own" debate, and newspapers reported that the book's author Helen Fielding had disowned the movie because of it.
Then the film reached the screens and all that was forgotten. Or most of it, at least. There were those who couldn't stomach the mangled English accent and some who just didn't get it: the big pants, the kooky self-loathing. The "some", of course, where mostly male. There were many who did get it, and Bridget Jones's Diary became one of the most successful British films of all time.
It brought Zellweger an Oscar nomination, but it also brought her more pounds. For the first movie she put on 25lbs. For the sequel she's had to put it on all over again. It has been the subject of endless fascination to the press, who marvelled as she bulked up on Krispy Kreme doughnuts, ice-cream and Kit-Kats and cut the jogging from her daily routine. The rumour is that she was paid extra for every bit of weight she put on for the latest movie. That it was dollars for pounds.
Of course, when a Hollywood actress goes from sizes eight 10 it is treated by the glossy mags and tabloids as if the Earth has begun to spin the wrong way on its axis. In various reviews, Bridget Jones is described as "an ample London lass" and a "plump singleton", and Zellweger was praised for the paunch even if she was simply going from waif-like to healthy. Besides, she has managed to lose it just as quickly after the filming of each. The Evening Standard recently bucked convention by air-brushing weight on to a Zellweger photo-shoot, having decided that she looked "positively skeletal".
Meanwhile, the Daily Express described her as "gaunt" and asked if she'd "gone too far". The Sun offered simple advice: "eat more".
For her part, she claims not to understand the fuss about her putting on the weight and losing it again for the movie, treating the topic with weariness. "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."
All this obsession over her relationship with the weighing scales sometimes obscures her success as an actress. She has won three Golden Globes and an Oscar (she's been an Academy Award nominee three times), which is a pretty good strike rate for someone who hasn't been around that long. And yet, although she is rumoured to have earned $20 million to reprise the role of Bridget Jones, she remains a low-profile superstar.
She was born in April 1969 in the town of Katy, Texas. Her surname has a decent Scrabble-score potential and might have caused other actresses to find a simpler alternative, but she has great pride in her father's Swiss background. Her mother, meanwhile, is Norwegian. While she had been involved in drama at school, she ultimately fell into acting by accident, taking a drama class only because she needed a fine art credit to get her university degree in English literature. After college she went straight into acting, going the traditional route of taking small movie parts while waiting tables to keep afloat.
Her first major role was in The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was a turkey but which led to a small role in 1994's Reality Bites and eventually to a move to Los Angeles. In 1996 Cameron Crowe picked her ahead of Cameron Diaz, Bridget Fonda and Winona Ryder for the role of Tom Cruise's love interest in Jerry Maguire, and, by the time audiences had seen her tell Cruise "you had me at hello", she had arrived as a star in her own right.
After that she was in danger of stumbling a little when she played romantic leads in uninspiring movies such as The Bachelor and the Farrelly brothers' Me, Myself & Irene. However, at the same time she was taking on difficult roles in smaller movies, and if Neil LaBute's black comedy Nurse Betty received a lukewarm response from critics and audiences in 2000, she won the first of her Golden Globes for her portrayal of a delusional widow.
Recent years have seen her become something of a fixture at both the Golden Globes and the Oscars. Having been nominated for Bridget Jones's Diary and her song-and-dance exploits in Chicago, this year she won Best Supporting Actress for her role in the American civil war epic Cold Mountain. It was a particularly happy outcome given that when the book was first released, Zellweger had considered buying the rights but couldn't afford it.
She has developed a reputation within the industry as independent-minded and deliberately unconventional. "Really early on, in Texas, most of the roles I was offered were the other woman, the harlot, the one-night stand, the hot blonde in black dress. It's a really difficult path to get off, once you've embraced it," she has said. Future roles will see her playing opposite Russell Crowe in Depression-era boxing biopic The Cinderella Man and as Janis Joplin in Piece of My Heart.
Meanwhile, she professes to be uncomfortable with the whole Hollywood thing, playing up her modesty in interviews. "I see the Oscar in my bedroom and it's like I bought it at a souvenir shop on Hollywood Boulevard."
Being so closely allied with Bridget Jones, of course, has made it easy for the press to tag her with the unlucky-in-love label. "It was everywhere, I've been plagued by this whole 'Renée has such a sad, challenging love life . . . poor, single Renée, always looking for the boy'." She is also very guarded about her private life, so that journalists are left to speculate on whether or not she was engaged to Jim Carrey (she says not), involved with George Clooney and if her on again/ off again relationship with White Stripes rock star Jack White is currently on or off again.
She would not have enjoyed a recent story in the Sun, which aired her dirty laundry in public by claiming that when working she "sends used undies home by courier - because she doesn't want airport security men handling them". And before you say it, she's probably heard all the "big knickers" quips several times already.
• There are advance screenings of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason at selected cinemas this weekend. It opens throughout the country next Friday.
The Zellweger File
Who is she?
Actor who is probably best known in this part of the world for playing Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones's Diary
Why is she in the news?
Advance screenings of the second movie, Bridget Jones: The Edge of
Reason, start in cinemas this weeked.
Most appealing characteristic
She seems to be genuinely grounded. At least, as grounded as multi-millionaire movie stars can get.
Least appealing characteristic
She's been praised for managing Bridget's English accent, but it sounds like she's been given voice coaching by Queen Elizabeth.
Most likely to say
"Does my bum look big in this? Yes? Good."
Least likely to say
"I can't keep up with the Joneses"