Renee Zellweger says body talk is boring

19/01/2007 11:48

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK, Jan 18 (Reuters Life!) - Ask actress Renee Zellweger about her weight and she yawns.

"Boring," she says, when asked to talk about her body.

Zellweger, a Texan renown for piling on the pounds to take the lead role in "Bridget Jones’s Diary" and sequel "The Edge of Reason," is playing another British woman in "Miss Potter," based on the life of children’s writer Beatrix Potter.

Oscar-winner Zellweger, 37, recently told Reuters why she likes to play Brits -- and what she thinks about the column inches the media devotes to her body:

Q: You surprised critics with your accent and performance playing London singleton Bridget Jones and now you are playing Beatrix Potter. Why are people so fascinated by how well you adopt an English accent?

A: "I don’t understand it, it is just work. It is part of the process. You concentrate in a different way, I have learnt, because I kept trying to do that in this last piece that I did where I play a contemporary character and I would catch myself listening to how I was forming words. Anyway, I work with Barbara Berkery (dialogue coach) and she teaches me what to do and she stands by me and she corrects me."

Q: Is it true you did not break out of the accent for the entire six months you were filming? Why?

A: "It .....continued below

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was just lazy because I don’t want to the work in the morning to start all over again, that’s the truth. I just wanted it to be habit because I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to have to do the exercises to start your face going in the right direction and using the right muscles in your face. I colored my hair every day for this picture. Every day I put temporary brown colour that was dripping down my neck as I left my hotel room to go to set and I wished I had colored it, just committed to it, because it would have been a nice shade of brown by the end of the film instead of the sort of papaya-pink that it ended up becoming."

Q: You had to gain weight to play Bridget Jones and ever since there has been a lot of attention given to your body. What is your reaction to that?

A: "It’s disheartening, because it is a reflection of what it is that we value, and it is a superficiality that does not deserve the focus of energy that it gets. It’s boring -- and it sends wrong messages."

Q: What do you think are the main differences between playing the fictional character of Bridget Jones and now a real British woman, Beatrix Potter?

A: "I guess the difference was that there are clearly more people to disappoint. I won’t say that Helen Fielding didn’t create a character that wasn’t embraced by popular British culture but I guess Beatrix was part of the fibre of British literature in a very substantial way."

Q: Why do you take so well to British roles?

A: "I have no idea. I find that the further removed the character is from myself, the more creatively satisfying it becomes and maybe I feel safer with it."

Q: It has been reported there might be a third Bridget Jones movie. Is there any truth to that?

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