Renée Zellweger has finally revealed what she was really up to during her six-year acting hiatus.
The Jerry Maguire actress decided to take some time off in 2010, not appearing in another film until 2016. Zellweger, 55, admits she “needed” the break.
“I was sick of the sound of my own voice,” she said in a discussion with her Bridget Jones’s Diary costar Hugh Grant, published by British Vogue on Wednesday, January 15. “When I was working, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, listen to you. Are you sad again, Renée? Oh, is this your mad voice?’ It was a regurgitation of the same emotional experiences.”
That’s not to say Zellweger sat around the house during her hiatus. She loaded her schedule with just about everything except for acting.
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“I wrote music and studied international law,” she said. “I built a house, rescued a pair of older doggies, created a partnership that led to a production company, advocated for and fundraised with a sick friend, and spent a lot of time with family and godchildren and driving across the country with the dogs. I got healthy.”
Zellweger’s hiatus came on the heels of her starring in Case 39, a supernatural horror film that was panned by critics and struggled at the box office. Though she’s had far more success since then, including as Judy Garland in 2019 biopic Judy, she isn’t about to go running to social media to read reviews of her performances. She never has.
“I promise you. I’ve never looked at the box office or Rotten Tomatoes,” she said.
Zellweger added she doesn’t have X, doesn’t read reviews and has never googled herself, saying, “Why care? It’s none of my business.”
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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth installment in the Bridget Jones series, is set for a February 13, 2025 release on Peacock. Zellweger and Grant also discussed how the films have endured since the original came out in 2001.
“What I think is, don’t you meet a lot of people who say, ‘I am Bridget Jones’!?” Zellweger asked. “I think maybe folks recognize themselves in her and relate to her struggles and feelings of self-doubt. Bridget is authentically herself and doesn’t always get it right, but whatever her imperfections, she remains joyful and optimistic, carries on and triumphs in her own way.”
She added, “She seems to make her quirky individuality and shortcomings charming, lovable and acceptable — and, in turn, she makes us feel lovable and acceptable too.”
See the full feature in the February issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday 21st of January.
