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Everyones gulping down great lashings of CBD water, including Renee Zellweger, who cant hydrate fast enough.
I dont mean to make thisweird, he says, but is that ReneeZellweger?
A big smile spreads across her face.
I have very authentic exchanges with people once again.
She stares at me for a second and then screws up one of those great Renee Zellweger faces.
Thankyouverymuch, she says, sort of doing Elvis if he were from Texas.
It was important, that time.
Youre not in peoples consciousness anymore, so they dont immediately make the connection.
Its a quieter life, and I love it.
For a long time, Zellweger had anything but a quiet life.
You could blame 1996sJerry Maguire,which took her from ingenue to star.
She was effortlessly soignee on the red carpet, the darling of fashion editors.
Zellweger, perhaps, experienced the highs and the lows as acutely as anyone.
Stepping back, Zellweger says, was crucial.
I wasnt taking care of myself.
I was the last thing on my list of priorities.
I wanted to allow for some accidents.
There had to be some quiet for the ideas to slip in.
One day around this time, she ran into her friend Salma Hayek in an airport.
She shared this beautiful … metaphor?
The rose doesnt bloom all year … unless its plastic.
She levels me with a look.
Because what does that mean?
It means that you have to fake that youre okay to go and do this next thing.
But actually, no, you should collect yourself and, you know …rest.
Thanks to the shrink, she realized she was depressed.
Nothing like international humiliation to set your perspective right!
she says with a mordant laugh.
It clarifies whats important to you.
And it shakes off any sort of clingy superficiality … that you didnt have time for anyway.
Well, now I know.
I got the hardest kick.
And it aint the end.
But she also wants to be perfectly clear: The rough patch only lasted a year.
Zellweger hadnt plannedon any of this.
She was an English major at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 90s.
And as we filmed it, I was just dumbfounded.
Its hard to overestimate the deleterious effect this sort of thing can have on an actor.
Jonesis officially a classic, pure Zellweger goofball magic.
None of it I regret, Zellweger says.
Though a lot of it?No thank you.
She lets out a honking laugh.
If I could remember more of it,thatwould be nice, because my 30s are a blur.
I think I just didnt sit still long enough to actually let anything soak in.
People are like, Remember that time we …?
and I have absolutely no recall about the thing at all.
Whats my girlfriend say?
you could see how vulnerable they are, she says.
When youre not grounded, how can you have boundaries?
You cant just grind on forever, I say.
Well, youcan, she replies.
But then youre really unhealthy and unbalanced and, you know,about to die.
And then you look back on it and wonder what happened.
And where are the relationships that you didnt have a chance to nurture?
She continues: I had lots of different places to live but no home.
No home where I actually unpacked pictures and put them on the shelf …
I had two suitcases.
Now I put the carry-on up on a shelf!
She was a blur.
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Zellweger and I would eventually all have dinner in Manhattan a couple months later.
Zellweger arrived very early in her running clothes and ate steamed spinach.
Was she in love?
Dont know, she said.
Dont ask myself, dont talk about it.
Back then, she couldnt stop buying up old houses.
She was searching, she tells me now.
I did a where-are-you-supposed-to-live tour around 2003.
It must be said: Zellweger looks great; she looks likeherselfagain.
But Hollywood 50, which is to say several years younger.
When I tell her I am a little reluctant to bring up the whole plastic-surgery kerfuffle she says.
Because it probably gives you a stomachache, asking me about that, doesnt it?
There is a long pause.
Its a difficult topic, I say.
Well, because theres a value judgment thats placed on us.
That makes me sad.
I dont look at beauty in that way.
And I dont think of myself in that way.
I like my weird quirkiness, my off-kilter mix of things.
It enables me to do what I do.
I dont want to be something else.
I got hired in my blue jeans and cowboy boots with my messy hair.
I started working like that.
I didnt have to change to work.
So why was I suddenly trying to fit into some mold that didnt belong to me?
Whats up with that?
I pull my sleeves down, she says.
Its a thing I do.
I play with my sleeves all day until theres holes in them.
Im going through a moment here.
With, like, fatigue on my face.
Her plump lips seem to have gone slightly crooked at the moment.
She gently massages them once more.
And then says I think to her lips: You may not invite any friends over.
Youre done, as if to punish them for their misbehavior.
She nails the way Garland, arms akimbo, hunched herself and chewed on her words:IsFrankSinatrahere?
Zellweger even manages to conjure Garlands butch aspect Imfine!
and that slacks-and-a-blouse march in kitten heels down the long hallway that leads to the stage on opening night.
I felt like we never actually did it.
We were talking about seeing what we might be able to do.
Lets attempt to emulate this year and this less successful evening in her life, she says.
A lot of it was, like, dentist rage.
You know that dentist rage?
Where you dont have a choice?
She bangs her fist on the table between each word.
And then youre so glad that you did?
Thats what it was like.
Its a big ask to play Judy Garland, says Goold.
The Scandinavian-looking, blonde, diminutive Bridget Jones wasnt necessarily slam-dunk obvious.
Shes got a really good voice and a really good ear great pitch, great phrasing.
When you watch that old Garland footage from talk-show interviews shes brilliant.
Just when you think shes maybe spiraling away, she snaps back really crisp and laserlike.
Did you ever see that Dick Cavett interview?
says Zellweger, who spent months reading biographies and watching YouTube footage.
(Im thequeeeeenof the comeback, says Garland.
Im getting tired of coming back …
I cant go to … the powder room without making a comeback.)
Shes just off the charts.
It was her film.
I think she really got into Judys skin.
As close to literally as possible: Says Zellweger, Jany fit the costumes to Judys posture.
So the dresses didnt fit me unless I stood like I was supposed to stand.
The zipper wouldnt go up.
As she had on the set ofChicago,Zellweger stayed in character.
That kind of person.
It was almost as if he never really met Zellweger until the very end.
She was always in the wig and had a bit of a prosthetic nose and dark contacts.
Thats the movie star.
Zellweger, as herself, has that rat-a-tat-tatWhats the news boys?
Her texts are threaded through with a similar manic patter.
And getting Neil to drink a whiff of annnything would be another to top the list!
Though if you succeed you gottttttta call!
…with phone voice notes ON.
He is a human treasure and I love and admire him so.
We must share a table sometime soon!
Ill bring the fire extinguisher.
(He is right: YouTube it and fasten your seat belt.)
Zellweger had never seen the film and was mesmerized, says Meron.
But then he whispered to me one day: Shesgreat.
She worked like a demon on her voice.
The film highlights the fact that Garland wasnt just a drug addict.
In fact, she was an insomniac, and it drove her mad and toward the pills.
Zellweger thinks the insomnia is a crucial but neglected part of Garlands psychology.
I like to say that Im a night owl who gets up early.
I get busy at midnight.
I used to move the furniture around.
Because you cant fixthisbut you’re free to fixthat.
I like my laundry.
There was so much that was not allowed for.
Youre not allowed to be human.
Today, Zellweger seemstotally in control.
She just signed a two-year first-look deal with Stacey Levin, senior VP of development at MGM Television.
Staceys a Staten Island girl, says Zellweger.
I like her ideas and why she likes things.
Among the many things she hopes to do at MGM is direct.
Meron is convinced Broadway is in her future.
Not immediately, he says, but there will be a Broadway show starring Renee.
When I mention this to Zellweger, she shouts, From his mouth to Gods ear!
He and I have talked about it for years.
We play around with little ideas Wouldnt this be fun?
The lead single from the album features Zellweger as Judy singing Over the Rainbow.
I think the majority of the films that Ive made wouldnt get made today, Zellweger tells me.
I feel lucky that I lived that moment, but I dont mind that its different.
We play for our supper.
And thats what were doing more than ever now, and I dont mind!
What I really love about it is that Im still allowed to do it.
Were pushing into hour No.
4 at Topanga Living.
Your phone is so angry just look at it.
Its practically stuck to the table.
And arent all gay men just a little mortified when they realize they actually really do love Judy Garland?
Turns out, in the Venn diagram of Judy-Renee, you might add gay icon to the shaded-in area.
Given that Zellweger is playing Judy Garland, this comes up.
And I thought,Oh gosh, here we go!
She had been asked these questions during a press junket a couple weeks earlier and wasnt quite prepared.
I had a very hard time answering his question.
But Im everything else.
Did you feel like it was your cross to bear?
But in the experience of coming up as a closeted gay person, how does it manifest in character?
Are there common denominators?
Theres a lot of rage, I say.
It surfaces in different ways.
And theres a lot of stunted growth in the gay men that I know.
Those are the negatives.
My experience of it as an observer is the opposite from that, she says.
I see that theyre sort of an earlier maturation.
And I see that there is that determination that youre talking about, but its not without thoughtfulness.
Sometimes it just doesnt really matter.
If theres a spark, it just is, and who needs to explain it?
I bring up something Id been reluctant to: Weinstein.
There is a very long pause.
Its a hard thing to talk about in this context.
Its such a big topic.
And its personal and its not.
She says the wordvictimwith clenched teeth.
I always felt that I knew what to do in those circumstances.
I didnt feel … accostable.
I never felt that I was being insulted, demeaned.
I didnt recognize it as that.
It was jocular its a joke.
And then theres that other side of it: that I love male-female banter, that playful dynamic.
So, its a big conversation.
But it wasnt something that I felt, it wasnt something that I was aware of.
I was very surprised by some of the things that were unearthed.
But were you reallyaround?
I dont hang out like that.
I dont go to the party.
Thats my relationship to Hollywood.
I dont live in that.
And it was hard to accept the surprise of that.
Sometimes, Zellweger cant help herself she just wants to talk.
Heres one from April 2006, about making the Beatrix Potter film: All things potter this end!
Seems hed FOUND himself in the 80s.
And the hat didnt qqquite sit on the head, but rather perched pride-of-place atop a super coif.
Theres something so wonderfully random and detailed about this missive like reading someones diary in real time.
Back in Topanga, its approaching 7 p.m. and still in the upper 90s.
Zellweger has to drive all the way to Bakersfield to pick up her dogs.
They stay there with her vet-tech friend DeAnn when shes out of town.
But first shes got to back out onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard in rush-hour traffic.
Shes got the Beatles on the stereo (I listen to the Beatles every day.
Why a Jeep, I ask.
And then funnier, in a thick Texas accent: Muuuuuudsliiiiiides.
Did you have to escape the fires last fall?
Yes, I evacuated.
Dogs in a van and off we went.
Had to leave for a week.
Ive never done that before, where you play the what-do-I-take-with-me game.
I became an increasingly superficial person as the threat diminished.
I was like:I want those boots!Because you start with, you know, the dogs.
And then I grabbed my dads old typewriter that I used to write my grandparents letters on onion paper.
And then I cleared out the desk drawers, because thats where the important papers are.
And of course, I have my two bags ready to go at all times.
Shes still trying to back out onto the boulevard.
Didnt I tell you that if we left during rush hour we wouldnt get anywhere anyway?
Look to the right.
Innit that the giggle?
At long last, theres an opening with enough space for this high-risk maneuver.
Look out, world!
she says as she floors it and we lurch in reverse out into traffic.
She waves to the cars that have had to slow their ride to let her out.
Thank you, America!
Thats me, she says, pointing out her road.
I live way over that ridge.
What made her buy this particular house?
It feels a little bit like West Texas.
I like that its solitude and silence.
I have to clean up messes and solve problems.
I have to deal with the generator and the septic system and the water tank.
Strangely enough, that character is much closer to Zellweger than those dizzy, solipsistic Bridget Jones types.
