Being Bridget Jones

By Claudia Puig
USA Today

"It's magic to get to be that girl. She makes us recognize those points where we're losing control." Renee Zellweger, Actress Universal Studios photos

Renee Zellweger reprises her Academy Award-nominated title role in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," opening in Hawai'i today.

'Bridget Jones: the edge of reason' Opens tomorrow

Whether addressing an acquaintance who pops into her hotel suite as "darlin,'" insisting on examining the roots of someone complaining about a bad dye job or offering a visitor a doughnut (though not indulging herself), she is as approachable and endearing as her cinematic alter ego, Bridget Jones.

But make no mistake: Zellweger, 35, is a canny player of the Hollywood game. An Oscar winner who makes an estimated $12 million to $15 million a picture, she chooses her projects wisely, writes for her own creative satisfaction and describes herself as supremely curious. Underneath her sweetheart persona is a business-savvy actress always hungry for a new challenge. She may look fragile and demure (especially with her super-slender figure, pale skin and hair newly dark for "Cinderella Man"), but she's a steely professional.

While so many others strive to be stars, Zellweger has concentrated on being a character actress — and has become a star because of it. Her comic flair is evident in roles as disparate as the painfully honest Bridget Jones, the feisty Civil War survivor Ruby in "Cold Mountain," the voice of the friendly fish Angie in "Shark Tale" and the ambitious Roxie Hart in "Chicago."

She willingly turned into a frump for her role in the Bridget Jones sequel, "The Edge of Reason." The movie tested so well that it opened on some U.S. theaters a week earlier than planned.

"Tell me another movie star of her status who is willing to look like that on the screen," says "Edge of Reason" director Beeban Kidron.

In weight-obsessed Hollywood, few actresses would gladly bulk up from a Size 4 to a Size 14 — twice — even for the meatiest role. But she does not regard the 30 pounds she packed on to play the calorie-counting Bridget as a weighty subject.

"What's interesting is why the fixation," she says. "It's such an infinitesimal part of the characterization. I mean, who cares?"

She wonders if male actors who made similar transformations, such as Russell Crowe for "The Insider" and Robert De Niro for "Raging Bull," were beset for years by similar queries.

Now back to her model-thin size, Zellweger reveals her diet secret: "Fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch, fish for dinner and running. You run to the gym and you run back from the gym."

But the nationwide lust for thinness confounds her. "I don't understand where it comes from, this paradigm for beauty," she says. "Look at the sirens of the '40s and '50s. They were voluptuous and gorgeous. What happened to that? Who does it benefit that we have this obsession?"

When the fashion industry is posited, she has a ready response.

"I think Marilyn made a dress look pretty damn good," she says. "And so did Jayne Mansfield, for crying out loud. And Rita Hayworth certainly filled out a gown."

Though audiences may regard her as just as adorable, Zellweger is no longer the ingenue from 1996's" Jerry Maguire." The actress has established herself as a viable peer to Crowe or De Niro, having won a best-supporting-actress Oscar last year for her role in "Cold Mountain" and widespread acclaim for playing Roxie Hart in "Chicago," 2002's best-picture winner.

Her next project is "Cinderella Man," a film directed by Ron Howard and co-starring Crowe as Jim Braddock, a Depression-era boxer turned folk hero. Zellweger plays his wife.

She may portray an awkward British single girl in the film adaptation of Helen Fielding's best-selling novels, but it is Bridget Jones' trademark good humor that the Austin, Texas, native has most in common with the character she is reprising.

What has drawn her to play Bridget again is the character's role as a cultural symbol of the contemporary, conflicted, single woman. And her unabashedly honest, upbeat — though often flummoxed — persona.

"It's magic to get to be that girl," she says. "She makes us recognize those points where we're losing control. We know what she's afraid of and where she thinks her shortcomings are, what she is anxious about in terms of potential failure. It draws you in. Then, of course, she takes it a step further and blurts it out and says the thing she didn't mean to. And it's our biggest fear that we might do the same thing."

And for Zellweger, the opportunity to indulge in such broad comedy was exhilarating.

"It's wonderful to stand there in skis on the slope and hear the direction 'Action!' and to translate what 'Bridget traverses the slope' means, to just let the honesty and vulnerability come out. It's limitless."

Sequels, as a rule, do not appeal to her. But reprising Bridget Jones was another story altogether.

"Most follow-up films aren't really necessary," she says. "They're not really substantial enough to stand on their own. And it didn't interest me to fall into that scenario with this character, because I didn't want to compromise what we had done before. ... I love that character so much and I know a lot of people do, too."

She has a much quieter role in "Cinderella Man" as the wife of Crowe. "It is a very simple, old-fashioned story," she says. "It's about this family and their love for one another, and this man who is determined to take care of his family against all odds."

She said she found it "mesmerizing" to work with director Ron Howard. "He's such a nice man," she says with an impish gleam. "I had so much fun going around saying, 'You know that jerk Ron Howard?' "

That playful wit helps to make her a natural comedian, says Kidron. "Comedy is an ability to play the truth in a ridiculous circumstance," Kidron says. "It's also about timing. Renee has that gift. Obviously, it's something she shares very much with Hugh Grant, who has it in a different, English way."

The issue of an American actress playing the oh-so-British Bridget was a big deal when it was first announced that Zellweger would play the beloved character. Many fans of Fielding's book were vociferous in their opposition. But Zellweger did her homework, spending months in London working on her accent and portrayal. The second time around, no protests were heard.

"From the moment we went into rehearsal till the minute we wrapped, I never heard her Texan accent," Kidron says. "We have assimilated her. She is one of our national treasures. As far as we're concerned, we now have absorbed her. She's Bridget Jones, she's British, and it's all over for you guys."