'Judy' Star Renée Zellweger Opens Up About Leaving Hollywood For Six Years
Renée Zellweger is getting candid about how a therapist’s advice lead to her taking years off from making movies.
The actress is featured on the cover of New York Magazine and sat down for an interview.
The writer, Jonathan Van Meter, has known Zellweger for years and they talked for hours inside a Los Angeles café.
Throughout the day, the actress talked about everything from Bridget Jones Diary, Harvey Weinstein, her upcoming movie “Judy” (where she plays Judy Garland) and the six years she stayed outside the spotlight.
Zellweger took a break from Hollywood from 2010 until around 2016.
She talked about the time off saying, “Six years. It was important, that time. You’re not in people’s consciousness anymore, so they don’t immediately make the connection. It’s a quieter life, and I love it.”
Before she took the break, she admits, “I wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was the last thing on my list of priorities.” She started seeing a therapist and took the advice to heart.
She explained, “He recognized that I spent 99 percent of my life as the public persona and just a microscopic crumb of a fraction in my real life. I needed to not have something to do all the time, to not know what I’m going to be doing for the next two years in advance. I wanted to allow for some accidents. There had to be some quiet for the ideas to slip in.”
In regard to the old plastic surgery rumors, Zellweger didn’t hold back her thoughts.
She said, “And the implication that I somehow needed to change what was going on because it wasn’t working. That makes me sad. I don’t look at beauty in that way. And I don’t think of myself in that way. I like my weird quirkiness, my off-kilter mix of things. It enables me to do what I do. I don’t want to be something else. I got hired in my blue jeans and cowboy boots with my messy hair. I started working like that. I didn’t have to change to work. So why was I suddenly trying to fit into some mold that didn’t belong to me?”
Zellweger is asked about her role in “Judy” and how she related into the iconic entertainer. She revealed she suffers from insomnia just like Garland. In the film “Judy”, they focus on how Garland was not just a drug addict but had problems sleeping, which lead to her taking pills. Zellweger shared she suffers from insomnia and even goes to the movies at 3 am.
The actress even touches upon working with Harvey Weinstein. Zellweger says she is not a victim of Weinstein’s and he was never improper with her.
“Judy” will be released on September 27. The early reviews rave about Zellweger’s performance.
