Quick Bio
Renée Kathleen Zellweger is an Academy Award-, BAFTA-, SAG Award-, and Golden Globe-winning American actress and producer, who has established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses in recent years.

Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror movie Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which she acted alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family. Her next movie was Love and a .45 (1994), in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, winning roles in the films Empire Records (1995) and The Whole Wide World (1996). Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with her role in Jerry Maguire (1996), where she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. She won the role over Mira Sorvino and Marisa Tomei. Since then, Zellweger has won acclaim in roles such as One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman. The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards, but she was in the bathroom when future co-star Hugh Grant announced her name. Zellweger later protested: "I had lipstick on my teeth!"[9]

In 2001, Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, a film that is based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight. During casting Zellweger was told she was too skinny to play the chubby Bridget, so she very quickly embarked on gaining the required weight and learned an English accent. She gained 20 pounds in order to complete her transformation to Bridget Jones.