Why does everyone hate renee zellweger

Beyond a certain prurience, of course, none of this is about Renee Zellweger. When we're talking about Renee, we're really talking about ourselves, our own confusion about aging, our fear that looking our age may penalize us even if we're not movie stars.

I don't know a woman past 45 who hasn't at least thought about how far to intervene to stall the appearance of the inevitable. This includes women who give excellent pep talks to other women about accepting themselves as they are. Pep talks are easier to give than to heed. A while back, I had a conversation with a friend. We agreed we would let age happen as it happened. No Botox, no eye lifts, no cutting. I might do it if I could be sure nobody knew I'd done it.

Just to level the playing field. I knew what she meant. For many people, especially women, and especially in public life, hanging on to the appearance of youth is about hanging on to a competitive advantage.

When a woman in the limelight — actress, politician, TV personality — fully embraces her middle age and stays competitive it's as shocking as any celebrity's Botox. The story was hugely popular on the Times website, not, I think, just because readers are excited about the show but because they were excited that McDormand, at 57, is brazenly unenhanced.

Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Many of those changes happen to our bodies. These are the core obsessions that drive our newsroom—defining topics of seismic importance to the global economy.

Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. He writes:. Oddly, that made it matter more. Celebrities, like anyone else, have the right to look however they want, but the characters they play become part of us. I suddenly felt like something had been taken away. The strangest thing about this troubling article is that Zellweger actually does look like herself in the trailer. Indeed, in the trailer she looks far more like Bridget circa than she does Zellweger circa While both leading ladies and leading men are generally expected to be fit and attractive, those standards are time and time again far more harshly applied to women.

After all, plenty of male actors have changed their appearance over the years, whether via plastic surgery or the natural effects of aging. Star Wars star Carrie Fisher took to Twitter to express a similar frustration about the constant discussions surrounding her body:. Vulture found that while leading men get older, their love interests stay the same age.

Was she in love? Credit: Alamy. A week later, I was on a plane to London, where Zellweger was preparing to play Bridget Jones once again.

She had the flu and was wrapped in a blanket, clinging to a cup of tea as if her life depended on it. Despite the illness, she was hilarious and smart, and we talked for hours in a dark hotel-lobby bar. She was gaining weight to play Jones, and her assistant kept bringing her little bowls of food every half-hour: potato chips mostly, but also doughnuts.

She was searching, she tells me now. I started in New York City and I had just a toothbrush in my purse and drove all the way out to the Cape. It must be said: Zellweger looks great; she looks like herself again. But Hollywood 50, which is to say, several years younger.

I like my weird quirkiness, my off-kilter mix of things. It enables me to do what I do. I got hired in my blue jeans and cowboy boots with my messy hair. I started working like that. It was fantastic. Credit: NBCUniversal. The movie, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in late August, is directed by Rupert Goold, best known for staging Shakespeare as artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London. The film is good, not great — though it hardly matters because Zellweger is riveting as Garland, her best acting to date.

She plays her as a spooked mess, both studied and utterly free, so intense you barely notice some of the more lachrymose Wizard of Oz flashbacks.

She nails the way Garland, arms akimbo, hunched herself and chewed on her words: IsFrankSinatrahere? She ties herself into a pretzel, suffering alone in a hotel bathroom in the middle of the night, zonked on pills yet still unable to sleep. We were talking about seeing what we might be able to do.

Every day. Just try that. You know that dentist rage? It was her film. As she had on the set of Chicago , Zellweger stayed in character. Zellweger had a lot of dance and voice training on Chicago, but most of her songs were upper-register pretty — high and bright — so I was not fully prepared for her to plant-the-feet-and-belt, a kind of singing that Judy Garland all but invented.

In fact, she was an insomniac, and it drove her mad and towards the pills. Because you gotta get up to go to work sometimes at 4am having gone to bed at 3am.

I get busy at midnight. I used to move the furniture around. I find laundry so satisfying because it brings some kind of order so I can feel, like, right: fresh, starting over, in peace. I like my laundry. Today, Zellweger seems totally in control. I like her ideas and why she likes things.

Among the many things she hopes to do at MGM is direct.