Biography

Renée Kathleen Zellweger is born in April 25, 1969, best known as Renée Zellweger and has the nickname Zelly.   She was born in Katy, Texas, daughter of the Swiss-born Emil Erich Zellweger and the Norwegian-born Kjellfrid Irene Andreassen.   

 

Zellweger is very close to her parents, and once stated that because her parents were from someplace else, they provided her with a window out onto the world.   Zellweger´s father, an educated mechanical and electrical engineer worked in the oil refining business and her mother was a nurse and midwife.  Zellweger also has an older brother, Drew who is to years older and works in the marketing business.   

 

Early Life

In junior high school, Zellweger was active in sports, including soccer, basketball, baseball and football.

 

After junior high school, she went to Katy High School, where she was a member of a drama club.  While member of the drama club, Zellweger took interest in acting and during the high school years she acted in several school plays.  

 

In high school, Zellweger was also a cheerleader and was voted the “Best Looking” of her class before graduating in 1987.

 

After high school, Zellweger went to the University of Texas at Austin to major in English language where she also took an acting class.  She was considered a good student, and made the Dean’s List of students who have attained high academic rank several times.

 

During the university years, Zellweger took jobs as a waitress in Austin, Texas and also worked with maintenance at The Velvet Touch in Flint in Michigan.

 

In 1991, Zellweger graduated from university with a BA degree in English.   After graduation she considered moving to Hollywood, but backed out of that idea and decided instead to stay in Texas and seek more experience.

 

After graduation from University, Zellweger worked in a beef commercial, but at the same time she started to audition for roles around Houston.

  

Films

 

Zellweger made her debut in  A Taste for Killing (1992) as Mary Lou, and in 1993 she had a minor role in the ABC TV mini series Murder in the Heartland.

 

In 1994 she appeared as Tami in Reality Bites, where actor Ben Stiller had his directorial debut of Ben Stiller, and the same year in 8 Seconds, as Buckle Bunny.   The same year, Zellweger also had the roles of Susan Doyle in Shake, Rattle and Rock!; Susan in Rebel Highway and Starlene Cheatham in Love and a .45 for which she achieved the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. 

 

1994 was also the year, Zellweger got her first main role when she played Jenny in the horror movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (also known as The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre), in which Matthew McConaughey co acted. 

 

In 1995 she moved to Los Angeles and got the role as Gina in the comedy-drama Empire Records and as a poet in the film The Low Life. 

  

She played the character of the schoolteacher Novalyne Price Ellis in The Whole Wide World in 1996.  But it was not until she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maquire, she first became well known as an actress and for that performance she was nominated to the Screen Actors Guild Award as best supporting actress.

  

A year later, Zellweger played prostitute named Elizabeth in the murder mystery film Deceiver, also known as Liar (UK release).  

 

In 1998, Zellweger got the role of Sonia Horowitz, young Brooklyn woman who is in a restricted and arranged marriage, in A Price Above Rubies. 

Later that year, she was Ellen Gulden in One true Thing, along with William Hurt and Meryl Streep.  And year later, she got the role of Chris O’Donnell´s girlfriend in Bachelor (1999).  

 

 In 2000, Zellweger played Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman and that role she received Golden Globe Award.  

 

In 2001, Zellweger got the lead role in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones’s Diary, which was based on Helen Fielding’s novel from 1996, along with Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.  For that role, Zellweger had to gain extra 20 pounds quickly and this weight gain became the subject of much media interest.   She also had to learn the English accent and for that she received voice coaching.  Part of that preparation involved working undercover for three weeks in a “work experience placement” for British publishing firm Picador in Victoria, London and for her effort Zellweger was nominated to the Academy Award as best actress.

For her performance as Bridget, Zellweger received praise from critics, and Stephen Holden of The New York Times commented about her: “Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real.”   

 

In 2002, Zellweger starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander, and the same year, she was Roxie Hart in the musical film Chicago, which was directed by Rob Marshall and co-starring Catherine Zeta Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly.

Chicago received an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Zellweger received positive reviews from the critics and got Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Award.  The SFGate commented on her performance in Chicago:  “Zellweger is a joy to watch, with marvellous comic timing and, in her stage numbers, a commanding presence.”  And The Washington Post noted that even though Zellweger couldn’t dance well in real life, the audience “wouldn’t know it from this movie, in which she dances up a storm.”

 

Zellweger played the character of Barbara Novak, in the romantic comedy Down with Love along with Ewan McGregor in 2003.  The year of 2003 was also the year of Cold Mountain, where Zellweger played Ruby Thewes, a young woman in the days of the American Civil War, who has lived a hard-scrabble life but is very adroit.  For her role in Cold Mountain, Zellweger got the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award as best supporting actress.  

 

In the year of 2004, Zellweger was the voice of Angie in the animation film, Shark Tale and same year she starred in the sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

 

 

She was Mae Braddock in the Ron Howard film Cinderella Man in 2005, where she played the wife of James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe), an Irish-American hard-nosed boxer.

And on May 24, 2005, Zellweger received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  

 In 2006, she appeared in Miss Potter, a movie based on the life story of the well known children’s book author Beatrix Potter, along with Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor and a year later she was the voice of Vanessa Bloom in the animation film Bee Movie.

  

In the western film Appaloosa, Zellweger plays the character of Allison French, a pretty, refined, and good-natured widow that arrives in town and causes jealousy between two long-term friends.  She also starred in the comedy Leatherheads along with Georg Clooney and John Krasinski, where she plays Lexie Littleton, a newswoman who tries to prove a football teams new hero is to good to be true.  

 

This year, to films has already been released.  In the film New in Town, Zellweger plays the role of Lucy Hill, a high-powered Miami consultant which is sent to a small Minnesota town.  And in the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens, Zellweger speaks for Katie.  Another film, Case 39 is waiting to be released.  In that film Zellweger plays the social worker Emily Jenkins, who saves the troubled 10-year old Lilith Sullivan from parents who try to kill her, only to find out the girl isn’t as innocent as she thought. 

 

To other films are in production; My One and Only, where Zellweger plays the role of Anne Deveraux, a woman who is in a quixotic search for a wealthy man and My Own Love Song, an upcoming drama film, along with co-starring Forrest Whitaker.  

 

Personal life

 

Zellweger has been married once, to singer Kevin Chesney which she met at a tsunami relief benefit concert.  They got married in a ceremony at the island of St. John on May 9, 2005 but on September 15, 2005, after only four months of marriage, they announced an annulment. Zellweger herself cited “fraud” as the reason in the related papers but after media scrutiny of her use of the word “fraud”, she stated that it was “simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny’s character.  The annulment was finalized in late December 2005.

 

Since the annulment, she has been linked to various personalities, including actor Luke Perry of Beverly Hills, 90210.

  

She dated director Joshua Pate after working on his film Deceiver in 1997 and was rumoured to have dated actor George Clooney.  

 

Her first high-profile romance was with actor Jim Carrey, which she was rumoured to be engaged with, but their relationship ended in December 2000.  

  

For two years, Zellweger dated The White Stripes singer Jack White, which she met while filming Cold Mountain, bur different schedules kept them apart and they broke up as friends.   

  

In 2002, Zellweger bought a house in Bel Air, but due to the constant attention from the paparazzi, she bought a home in Connecticut and moved in there in 2005.

  

In January 2007, she admitted getting scared at home alone due to security problems and fans that send or leave mail at her homes and was considering buying a gun for reasons of personal security.   

 

Zellweger claims she rarely spends time in her home in Connecticut.  Instead she keeps a small apartment in New York where she “stops over” to do laundry before moving on to her next film.

 

In 2005, Zellweger along with Marc Forster, took part in the 2005 HIV prevention campaign of the Swiss federal health department.   

 

Zellweger maintains a residence in the Roland Park area of Baltimore, Maryland.

 

 

  

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