Renée Zellweger's astonishing performance in the Judy Garland biopic, Judy, arrived in cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic last weekend. And with it, a fresh blast of wind blew across her three-decade career, with all the force of the tornado that catapulted Dorothy to Oz. The Oscar chatter for her breathtaking metamorphosis into the jittery, complicated star began at its first screening at the Telluride Film Festival this summer. Her interpretation of Judy was deemed ‘transcendent’ by The New Yorker. An unequivocal Renéesance is upon us.
How times change. Only five years ago, in the midst of a self-imposed, extended Hollywood hiatus, Renée was making news for the wrong reasons when she made a rare appearance at an awards event, her face looking different, sparking gossip about what work she may have had done. Now, despite being a three times Oscar nominee and one-time winner (for Cold Mountain, in 2004), Renée has never looked more imperious, talented and in control of her fabulous professional stock.
Judy is slighter in scope than Bohemian Rhapsody, but Renée is similarly possessed of the mystical osmosis Rami Malek enjoyed as Freddie Mercury (unlike Rami, she also sings all of the numbers herself ). Concentrating on the last year of Judy’s life and a troubled performing residency in London – high on prescription drugs, low on cash and losing custody of her children – her Judy lives on wit, nerve and pills alone. Caught in profile, it is as if Renée is haunted and enchanted by Ms Garland’s ghost.
Unlike the recent vogue for documentaries apportioning blame for the numerous addictions of Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston, Renée inhabits Judy’s life with a creditable equilibrium of joy and pain. On the musical numbers, she soars.
At first glance, Renée was an unusual choice for the role. ‘The best thing about working with her is that she’s really funny,’ director Rupert Goold told Grazia at last week’s rainy London premiere, at which Renée dazzled in a pink Emilia Wickstead gown. ‘It’s never a chore,’ he said. ‘But beyond that she’s really hard-working and, as a director, that’s what you want. Every shot, she was hungry for notes. She’s very gracious.’ When asked about Renée’s chance of scooping the 2020 Best Actress Oscar, Goold noted casually, ‘She deserves it.’
Renée fell into acting by accident, cast in a play with no experience at The University of Austin in her native Texas. She arrived in LA aged 24, playing spirited supporting roles before vaulting up the credits list by telling Tom Cruise ‘You had me at hello’ in the unforgettable Jerry Maguire. By the turn of the millennium she had defined a young working women’s generation with another unlikely casting, as blundering British romantic Bridget Jones. As Roxy Hart in another Oscar-nominated role in Chicago, she hinted at something of the raw performance power she’d bring later to Judy.
When Renée took her six-year hiatus, beginning in 2010, she seemed to leave behind a Hollywood going through its own late Judy Garland years, struggling against the new dawn of the digital age, giving in to Marvel’s aggressive superhero machine and taking necessary hits for the fall of the house of Harvey Weinstein. All three of Renée’s Oscar-nominated films were Weinstein productions, although she has been careful to distance herself from him. Renée is a straight-talker and intelligent powerhouse, one of Hollywood’s few starlets who fame appeared to find almost against her wishes. She’s a method actor – like Daniel Day Lewis and Robert DeNiro – who kept up the British accent through the three shoots of her Bridget Jones tenure.
Unlike Judy, Renée has played her fame hand close to her chest. Love affairs, occasionally high-profile (former co-star Jim Carrey, The White Stripes’ Jack White, a brief marriage to US country giant Kenny Chesney) have come and gone. She lives, currently single, with her dogs in the semi-rural bliss of Topanga Canyon, California, close enough to the glitz of LA to keep her smartly work-aligned, far enough away to lose phone signal. During the starry first decade of her success, she talked about losing any sense of herself in the Hollywood machine. When she was very publicly attacked for her changing face during the hiatus years, she wrote a scathing riposte to her loveless critics, in an open letter entitled ‘We can do better.
Her sharpest response is now upon us. Her Renéesance has carefully fired up one of the most pleasing and enviable of all Tinseltown talents. Bridget Jones has had her baby, reaching the other side of her personal rainbow. Garland didn’t manage hers, but earns a fitful tribute from her most earnest scholar.
Previously, Renée has been openly, publicly loved for her roles. With Judy, she ascends to the elite class of the Hollywood greats. Grazia asked her about her Oscars chances on the red carpet last Monday. The actor looked over her shrugged shoulders to reply, smiling, ‘I got to make this film. That’s all that matters to me.’
‘Judy’ is in cinemas nationwide now.
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