Rene Zellweger: “I try to laugh at myself more often”

A glass of Pinot Grigio empties slowly. Zellweger sips in small sips and in exactly the way it is supposed to drink good wine: inhaling air through the nose so that oxygen and wine interact, revealing the true bouquet. It seems that she does the same in the rest of her life: she needs to feel the true taste, to determine the “bouquet” of what is happening. When we met, she looked at me intently and asked: “Do we know each other? Have you already seen? As if the fact that we had already seen each other once would set the tone for future communication. I replied that it was unlikely, and what difference does it make if she does not remember me. She replied that, firstly, she would remember, and secondly, if we have already met, then intuitively we are not news to each other, which means we can “talk on a different level”. But since we have not met and the intuitive does not unite us, Zellweger warns that he does not tolerate criticism, does not tolerate journalistic curiosity and does not like to share his experiences with the world. That she shouldn’t be asked how she put on weight to play Bridget Jones and then shed it off. She is asked it endlessly, and he is stupid – that’s why she is an actress to change for the role. That weight for her is only a matter of hygiene, because she went in for sports and “aimed at the Olympians” and because her mother has a medical education and she followed them with her brother in terms of health. That she herself, Renee, leads a healthy lifestyle: “does not smoke anything, jogs and drinks very little.” As a result, I can’t stand it and ask: “Is this a briefing?” To which Zellweger sighs, seemingly even with relief, and utters the strangest phrase I have ever heard from interviewees: “Are you scared? Then start.” And I fearlessly start with the most difficult – the most personal.

The most important features

How do you deal with emotional crises?

I’m going for a run. I start the engine and wind a hundred kilometers through the desert. Sometimes I can cry. Are you crying for no reason?

How do you feel when you’re alone?

I am a stranger by nature. And truly happy only in the journey. Solitude is one such journey.

What is your main plan for the near future?

Deal with your fame. Don’t let her rule my life.

Are you learning to play the piano? What for?

You have to teach yourself all the time. That’s exactly what I’m teaching myself.

What do you like to do on the weekend?

Enjoy the fact that today you do not have to think about how I look.

What do you miss as an actress?

Personal history. Burt Lancaster fought in World War II, Joan Crawford was a washerwoman, Barbara Steinwick worked as a packer in a store from the age of 13. History itself passed through the lives of the great stars of the past. And that’s why they were interesting. And my generation has passed history.

Psychologies: You can immediately talk about the most, excuse me, unusual – about your only marriage, which lasted 128 days …

Rene Zellweger: Yes… I got married at 36. For the person I was in love with. And divorced four months later. All this, on the outside, is really somehow ridiculous. Ask.

So why? Why did you break up?

R. Z .: When we arrived at my house on Long Island, not far from New York, where we were going to live, it quickly became clear that Kenny did not accept my lifestyle, my friends, and in general – me in these new circumstances. I felt it and the emptiness that suddenly formed between us. It turned out that there is no relationship between us. And it’s pointless to prolong the emptiness.

Do you think that divorce in your case is a consequence of mutual misunderstanding, insufficient knowledge of each other?

R. Z .: Oh, there are many reasons. First, Kenny and I met when we were involved in a charity campaign to raise funds for the victims of the tsunami in Asia. It was such an upsurge… Your life suddenly had a clear, concrete and, pardon the pathos, lofty goal – to help people who survived the disaster. This elevated state affected our acquaintance: we were both in a kind of euphoria. Euphoria made a decision for us: we got married very soon. And they came to me on Long Island. And at that time I had a girlfriend, an amazing artist. She lived with her husband and a small child and was waiting for the second: they were waiting for me for a grandiose repair that they started in their house. They decided that the new person who would soon be born should enter the renovated house. And really, it’s not for them to go to the hotel when my house is very often empty. But as a result, it turned out that the newlywed Kenny came to the house where, in addition to his wife, there is also a small child, a pregnant woman, an unfamiliar man, their three cats and my cat. And with all this company, he was not ready to share me.

That is, choosing between love and friendship, you chose friendship?

R. Z .: I didn’t choose. I repeat: our relationship has become meaningless. Both Kenny and I “read” into each other meanings that we did not have. I … before marriage, I clearly began to look for some other life. My life was spent in filming, film promotion campaigns, meetings with agents and directors, ceremonies and other official events. I did not want and do not want to believe that this is all, my whole life … That is my friend – she is an amazing artist. But she married a guy she went to school with, bought a farm, had one child, then another, and didn’t pick up a brush for three years, except to write highly artistic wedding and christening invitations. It just turned out that something more important appeared in her life than art, than a profession. Something similar happened to me. I needed to put down my brush. Stop rushing to the shoot, thinking about the state of my hair, how I am dressed, whether you will like it during our interview … I had to stop. I settled on Kenny. I read into it my own, not its own meaning. I wrote a role for him. He wrote a role for me. But both of us turned out to be unimportant performers of the roles for which we were approved. I even think that this is the most common reason for the breakdown of relationships: we give a person a certain meaning, fit into our plans, and he is different and also has the right to plans. So I’m not a victim. And she never was.

Perhaps, in you, as in all of us, the model of family relations, set in childhood by your parents, speaks, their relationships?

R. Z .: No, only what we understood about their relationship can speak in us. My parents are generally a strange example. Strange for America. Dad is Swiss, his family left Switzerland when he was already a teenager. Mom is Norwegian, by blood – Sami. My parents remained somewhat Europeans. For example, I would not say that they were so proud of me and my brother. But there is something to be proud of: my brother is a very prominent manager in winemaking, and I’m sitting in front of you… they don’t call bail … And in our childhood it was the same – not in the American way, although we lived in a small town in the most-pressed American state – in Texas. For example, we didn’t have a tradition of going to the movies with the whole family on the weekends, which is very American and…provides some box office success for our films. Firstly, there was no cinema in our town, and secondly, we simply did not have it. As a result, I saw the first serious film only in college. My father, he is an engineer, worked very hard. And he earned a lot. He is extremely intelligent and very conservative. By the way, this is probably why the parents didn’t get married for so long: they met in the ocean, on a ship, and before marriage, their romance lasted two years. So, my father earned enough, but in our family it was customary to save. We didn’t need anything, but spending every cent was justified, which I think is more Swiss. An American would take loans…

How did you cope with the fact that your family was different from others?

R. Z .: I rather liked our exclusivity – I am still proud of my Sami narrow eyes and high cheekbones. And then, I went in for sports, and in childhood everything is simple: if you can confirm your viability physically, you are on a horse.

You are the embodiment of the American dream, the daughter of immigrants who became rich and famous. How do you feel about this view of yourself?

R. Z .: And what is the American Dream? Is it to take a place on the social ladder, preferably higher, and get money, preferably more? I am very cool about such an American dream. Money… I don’t let it interfere with my affairs. I do not choose roles by the size of the fee. I don’t let money affect my relationships with people. In a word, they won’t spoil me. But most importantly, those who believe in the American dream, prepared from financial and social ingredients, are arranged vertically: for them, in terms of success in life, there is an up and down. And so all his life, all the way he climbs. And I am arranged horizontally and live in a horizontal world: everything and everyone here has the right to exist, and the top and bottom are only inside me. Only I know where my true success is and where my real failure is. My world is big and wide, and you can travel through it. And on the vertical world – only to climb, always suffocating. But for my parents, the American dream was not about money and rungs of the social ladder, but about self-realization. They came to take place. I understand them.

What are your dreams? And the category of dreams itself – what is it for you?

R. Z .: You know, somehow it happened, I had such amazing luck that life was ahead of my dreams. I have never been so arrogant to dream about what I got as a result. My dreams were more modest in appearance: I wanted to be independent, I wanted to be able to answer for myself, I wanted to learn something worthwhile, I wanted to travel. I wanted life to challenge me and meet those challenges. When I got my first job at a bar in Austin, when I wiped tables and stood at the counter, when I was finally able to pay both my studies and my apartment, I started going to auditions and sometimes even got tiny commercials that I liked … that’s when my most important dreams came true. And this happened long before they called me and said: “You are approved for the role. Come meet your partner, Tom Cruise.” I don’t have any “parameters of happiness” – the criteria by which it is determined. I would, say, like to have some kind of family, but I never thought that, for example, by the age of X I should have such a house and so many children. All the right things for us happen to us by themselves. And if it doesn’t happen to me, I’m not going to be any less happy.

When do you experience happiness?

R. Z .: When I feel that right now, angry or crying, I live the fullest life. When I kiss my cat. When I’m driving through the desert. When I play sports … When I kindle a fireplace and play the guitar next to it. When I read my favorite books or those that I start to love. And it is not known where this feeling of happiness comes from. I distinctly felt it in Romania on the set of Cold Mountain. I saw a completely different way of life there – in comparison with our American one, it seemed to me much more real, authentic. There you understand how little material a person really needs for life and how beautiful a much simpler life can be than ours. When you see an 80-year-old … no, not an old woman at all – a woman who cuts firewood, you understand, you want to be the same – strong because you took care of yourself all your life – and at 80 take care of yourself the same way. And there are people like that, they live a simple life, they should be strong and happy – it never occurs to them to complain about any troubles there.

You played Bridget Jones, the one that millions of dugouts identify with. Do you yourself identify with her?

R. Z .: No, I’m learning from her. What I really admire about her is her enduring optimism in the face of adversity. She suffers more and more failures on the romantic front, but she is able to look back at what happened, around her … and laugh at herself. I also try to look around more often. And then it really turns out that it makes sense to laugh at yourself. That you yourself are even more ridiculous than your ambitions.

• 1969 April 25 in Katie, Texas, Emil Erich Zellweger, an engineer, and his wife Caylfried Andreassen, a nurse midwife, had their second child, a daughter, Renée Kathleen (their eldest son, Andrew, is two years older).
• 1988 Enters the journalism department of the University of Texas, where he takes acting classes and tries out for roles in films.
• 1992 Graduates from the university with a degree in journalism and English philology.
• 1994 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Return “Kim Henkel – the first notable role in the movie.
• 1995 Moves to Los Angeles to start a career in Hollywood; begins a four-year partnership with actor Rory Cochrane.
• 1996 First Hollywood role – “Jerry Maguire” by Cameron Crowe, in which Tom Cruise became Zellweger’s partner.
• 1999 The Bachelor by Garry Signora.
• 2000 “Sister Betty” by Neil LaBute, “Me, Myself and Irene” by the Farrelly brothers; the beginning of a long personal relationship with actor Jim Carrey.
• 2001 “Bridget Jones’s Diary” by Sharon Maguire; nomination for an Oscar for his role in “Diary …”; becomes the “face” and one of the donors of the Women’s Cancer Research Support Fund.
• 2002 “Chicago” by Rob Marshall, in which Zellweger herself performs all dance and vocal numbers; nomination for “Oscar” for his role in “Chicago”; romance with actor and director George Clooney.
• 2003 “Cold Mountain” by Anthony Minghella; romance with rock musician and singer Jack White.
• 2004 Golden Globe and Oscar for his role in Cold Mountain.
• 2005 Marries country singer Kenny Chesney and divorces him four months later.
• 2006 First production experience – the film “Miss Potter” by Chris Noonan, where Zellweger also plays the main role.
• 2007 Filming in George Clooney’s romantic comedy Leatherheads; voice acting for the animated film Bee Movie by Steve Hickner and Simon Smith.