Renée Zellweger says she needed a break from Tinseltown to do her job well.
“I found anonymity, so I could have exchanges with people on a human level and be seen and heard, not be defined by this image that precedes me when I walk into a room,” the Oscar winner told British Vogue for the July cover story. “You cannot be a good storyteller if you don’t have life experiences, and you can’t relate to people.”
Some of that anonymity may have had to do with her looks. In October 2014, Zellweger debuted a nearly unrecognizable new face, which she explained as merely a result of “living a different, happy, more fulfilling life,” but was heavily speculated to have been crafted by a plastic surgeon.
The actress, 47, starred in almost 20 movies between 2000 and 2010, and says, “I got sick of the sound of my own voice: it was time to go away and grow up a bit.”
One form of growth she doesn’t see as a big deal? Her weight gain for the fall release “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” in which she jumps back into the role of curvy character Bridget Jones.
“I put on a few pounds,” she said. “I also put on some breasts and a baby bump. Bridget is a perfectly normal weight and I’ve never understood why it matters so much. No male actor would get such scrutiny if he did the same thing for a role.”