Josh Welch
Renée Zellweger is sounding off on those infamous headlines about her appearance.
The Oscar winner, who next stars in the Judy Garland biopic, Judy, is reflecting on her career and her time in and out of the spotlight. From 2010 to 2016, Zellweger decided to take a break from Hollywood, choosing to focus on her well-being after years and years in the public eye.
“I wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was the last thing on my list of priorities,” Zellweger, 50, says in her cover story for New York magazine. “[My therapist] recognized that I spent 99 percent of my life as the public persona and just a microscopic crumb of a fraction in my real life. I needed to not have something to do all the time, to not know what I’m going to be doing for the next two years in advance. I wanted to allow for some accidents. There had to be some quiet for the ideas to slip in.”
In 2014, amid her break from acting, Zellweger sparked plastic surgery rumors after attending a red carpet event.
Addressing the speculation, the actress shares, “Well, because there’s a value judgment that’s placed on us. As if it somehow is a reflection of your character — whether you’re a good person or a weak person or an authentic person.”
“And the implication that I somehow needed to change what was going on because it wasn’t working,” Zellweger continues. “That makes me sad. I don’t look at beauty in that way. And I don’t 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 don’t want to be something else.”
The Dazed and Confused alum also notes, “I got hired in my blue jeans and cowboy boots with my messy hair. I started working like that. I didn’t have to change to work. So why was I suddenly trying to fit into some mold that didn’t belong to me?”
To read more from Zellweger’s cover story, head on over to Vulture.
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