Renée Zellweger Interview -- Goodbye, Hollywood

The Academy Award winner on why acting is a strange thing to call a job.

Out of the Storm

No one would suggest that Renée Zellweger, who made her way from small-town Texas to Hollywood’s A-list, lacks the drive and determination to be a star. But Zellweger doesn’t want to live a star’s life. In 2004 she stopped calling Los Angeles home and moved East, to get away from the paparazzi. In New York, where she’s not always recognized, she can live a simpler life.


Still, the Oscar-winning actress, 38, doesn’t mind the cameras on a movie set, where she always welcomes a challenge. Zellweger adopted a Civil War-era North Carolina accent and was acclaimed for her portrayal of a rural drifter in 2003’s Cold Mountain, learned to sing and dance as Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2002, and famously packed 20 pounds onto her five-foot-four frame to play the pudgy, romantically challenged publicist in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary.

This month, the actress is the voice for a florist named Vanessa in Bee Movie, an animated film created by Jerry Seinfeld (who costars as, naturally, a bee). On the eve of the movie’s release, Zellweger sat down with Reader’s Digest to talk about being single (her 2005 marriage to country singer Kenny Chesney lasted just four months), those pesky celebrity photographers and her favorite form of humor.

RD: Given all that you’ve achieved, does Katy, Texas, seem far, far away?
Zellweger: Mm, yeah, I guess it does. The person that I was at that time in my life is still here; it’s just, there’s been such a journey from that place.

RD: You always said you didn’t want to go Hollywood, but how do you avoid that, being in the business you’re in?
Zellweger: That’s a different job altogether: going to the scene and getting your picture taken. It all has its place, I’m sure, and it can be a lot of fun sometimes to find yourself in an unusual scenario. But it’s not the motivating factor. I don’t need to be in the eye of the storm. I love acting, I really do love it, but I have a very hard time. It’s a strange thing to call a job.

RD: Do you get used to the fame?
Zellweger: You don’t. I’m affected by it every day.

RD: You live in New York City now, with a second home in Connecticut.
Zellweger: Connecticut was actually meant to be home, but I just am too busy to make it a home. It’s the same town where my girlfriend and her kids live—they’re the extended family. So when I go home, I go there.

RD: Why did you leave Los Angeles?
Zellweger: I wasn’t really into being followed around everywhere by six guys in six SUVs with two-way radios.

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Working as a server at a sushi bar, I saw a customer trying to get my attention. "What's up, babe?" he asked in a strong foreign accent. "Everything is fine, sir," I replied. After a while the patron hailed me again, asking "What's up, babe?" Puzzled and annoyed, I gave the same reply. Observing this was my supervisor, who called me over. "What did that customer ask?" he inquired. When I told him, he smiled. "He doesn't want to know how you're doing," my boss said with a laugh. "He's asking for wasabi!"

-- Vijay Krishan