"She liked to have an extra helping and she didn't go to the gym every day and she's gorgeous anyway. She gets the guy anyway," Zellweger said
Credit: Alex Bailey/Miramax
NEED TO KNOW
- Renée Zellweger shared that playing Bridget Jones was “liberating,” despite the public’s “fixation” on the character’s appearance
- “She was a normal girl and she looked like her lifestyle. She liked to have an extra helping and she liked her Chardonnay and she didn’t go to the gym every day and she’s gorgeous anyway. She gets the guy anyway,” the actress said of Bridget Jones’s Diary‘s titular character
- Zellweger has starred in four Bridget Jones films, beginning with the 2001 original
Renée Zellweger says playing Bridget Jones was "liberating" — despite the public's "fixation" on the character's appearance.
During a cast reunion at the Tribeca Film Festival for the romantic comedy's 25th anniversary celebration, the Oscar winner, 57, opened up about taking on the titular role in the Bridget Jones's Diary series, sharing that she believes the character garnered so much attention because she was "a normal girl."
"Most romantic comedy heroines are polished, and they fit a particular paradigm for beauty in that moment, and this was not the paradigm," Zellweger said at the event on Friday, June 12.
"She was a normal girl and she looked like her lifestyle. She liked to have an extra helping and she liked her Chardonnay and she didn't go to the gym every day and she's gorgeous anyway. She gets the guy anyway," she continued. "Maybe more so, because she's so very herself that it makes her more attractive."
Credit: Everett
Zellweger went on to say that she believes the character of Bridget "sort of broke a norm in an unexpected way that it kind of spoke to people, me included."
"I love this character, and when people talk about the weight, I don't think of her as a person who is… There's nothing to fix," she said. "I think it sort of shifted our expectations for what a leading lady can look like."
The Chicago alum also shared that playing such a "messy" character was "liberating."
"I loved it," she said. "I loved that I could cry and my mascara could run, and nobody was running in with the little things that made me not shiny. And I could have a runny, snotty nose when I cry like what happens in real life, and the wind blows and your hair's messy and nobody's running in to brush it and make it perfect."
"It was so liberating to play someone who's having authentic experiences authentically," Zellweger continued. "It became one of my favorite things to return to and have to remember every time, 'We don't have to worry about that. I don't have to think about that. We're not doing the makeup, pimples — great.' "
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The star has previously been candid about gaining weight for the original 2001 film, as well as the first sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), though she opted not to for 2016's Bridget Jones's Baby. (Zellweger also reprised her role in last year's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.)
The character's obsessive calorie counting — which the Bridget Jones book series author Helen Fielding has said came directly from her own university diaries — has been among the things criticized about the character through the years.
While speaking to PEOPLE in June 2024, Fielding, 68, said, “Bridget has come in for criticism from the very moment she was published — particularly from people who don't understand irony. My feeling is that if we as women can't be ironic, or laugh at our imperfections, then we haven't got very far at being equal, have we?”
“And let's face it, women worrying about body image was a reality when I first wrote Bridget and is even more of a reality now,” she added.
“To me, the ability to laugh at yourself is a mark of strength, not weakness. The origin of writing Bridget was honest and from the heart," Fielding continued. "There was no grand sociological intention behind it. The fact that it resonated with so many people spoke for itself — there was clearly some truth there. I think it's better to look at the reasons why the voice resonates than to complain about its existence."
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