RENEE ZELLWEGER won the 2001 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role as Betty Sizemore in 2000’s hit film Nurse Betty. Zellweger followed this outstanding achievement with an amazing performance as Bridget in 2001’s smash hit Bridget Jones’s Diary which garnered international acclaim. It was for this role that she was nominated for a 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a BAFTA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical or Comedy, a Golden Satellite Award, an Empire Award, an MTV Movie Award and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award. She starred opposite Hugh Grant in this tongue-in-cheek comedy about a British woman’s determination to improve herself as she looks for love while filling her personal diary with her quirky thoughts and experiences.
She can currently be seen in Warner Bros.’s White Oleander based on the best selling novel by Janet Fitch about a teenage girl’s journey through a series of foster homes after her mother goes to prison. She starred opposite Robin Wright-Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Loehman. Zellweger recently finished production on 20th Century Fox’s film Down With Love, a satirical hommage to the 1960s sex comedies that starred Rock Hudson and Dorris Day. She stars opposite Ewan McGregor as the best-selling advice author Barbara Novak. The film is set for release in April 2003.
Zellweger is now in production on Miramax Film’s drama Cold Mountain in which she stars opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Directed by Anthony Minghella, the film is about a confederate soldier’s journey home after the American Civil War. It is set for release in late 2003. In 2004, Zellweger can be heard in DreamWorks’s animated comedy Sharkslayer. She lends her voice to an all-star cast including Jack Black, James Gandolfini, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese and Will Smith in this film about the shark mafia in the sea underworld.
Considering that she took her first acting class to ensure graduating from The University of Texas with a literature degree, Renee Zellweger’s rise to leading lady status has been as rapid as it has been unexpected. After appearing in such television projects as the USA Network telefilm A Taste for Killing and the Showtime Drive-In Classics series Shake, Rattle and Rock, she made her film debut while still in Austin in Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused. This was followed by Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, Love and a .45 (for which she received her first Independent Spirit Award nomination), 8 Seconds, The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Empire Records and My Boyfriend’s Back.
Her other film credits include 20th Century Fox’s comedy Me, Myself, and Irene directed by the Farrelly brothers starring opposite Jim Carrey, New Line’s The Bachelor, a romantic comedy in which she stars opposite Chris O’Donnell, and director Neil Labute’s dark comedy Nurse Betty with Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman and Universal’s critically acclaimed One True Thing with William Hurt and Meryl Streep. She also received much acclaim with her vulnerable performance opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. Directed by Cameron Crowe, she played Dorothy Boyd, a dedicated widowed mother who joins sports agent Maguire in his quest for principled representation. For her performance she was named Best Breakthrough Performer of 1996 by The National Board of Review, received a Blockbuster Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy and was nominated for a SAG Award.
According to Crowe, “Renee’s appeal is that she is just Renee, quirky and heartfelt. When I told her ‘You got the part’ [in Jerry Maguire], there was a silence. Then she said, ‘What makes you think I’ll take it?’”
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