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Home / Entertainment

Renee Zellweger - America's English actress

By Christine Kearney
29 Dec, 2006 01:14 AM3 mins to read

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Renee Zellweger is playing English author Beatrix Potter in the up-coming film <i>Miss Potter</i>. Photo / Reuters

Renee Zellweger is playing English author Beatrix Potter in the up-coming film <i>Miss Potter</i>. Photo / Reuters

KEY POINTS:

NEW YORK - American actress Renee Zellweger doesn't know what all the fuss is over her playing British women.

Zellweger created a stir several years ago when she landed the coveted role of the lonely London "singleton" Bridget Jones, adapted from Helen Fielding's best-selling book Bridget Jones's Diary.
She famously took speech lessons before landing the part, beating a host of British actresses.

Now she is playing another British figure in Miss Potter, a biopic of English literary phenomenon Beatrix Potter, whose early 20th century children's books, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit, remain bestsellers.

Acclaimed actors Emily Watson and Ewan McGregor play mere supporting roles opposite the petite blond Texan, who has earned a Golden Globe award nomination for the role.

But Zellweger says that compared to the fictional Bridget Jones, playing Potter, who died in 1943, brought different expectations.

"I guess the difference was there are clearly more people to disappoint," Zellweger, 37, told Reuters in an interview. "I won't say that Helen Fielding didn't create a character that was embraced by British culture, but Beatrix was a part of the fibre of British literature in a very substantial way."

The film's Australian director Chris Noonan was less delicate about Zellweger's threat to national pride.

"They are ashamed of it in England; they have got an American playing this English character," he joked when asked why the film had premiered in Britain but not yet opened.

Miss Potter has a limited US release this week and opens in Britain in January.

Zellweger, who helped bring the film to the screen as an executive producer, said her origins may add to any attention, including whether she can again ably lose any Texas twang.

Roles were 'chance'

"It is just work. It is part of the process," she said of perfecting the English accent. "It's much more exciting to talk about blaspheming the language because you're from Texas, I guess."

Sprinkling her talk with Britishisms like "brilliant," Zellweger dismissed as fabrication reports of a third Bridget Jones film.

"I said 'bollocks.' I said there was no truth to it at all," she said.

During the filming of Miss Potter, Zellweger did not break out of her accent on or off the set, while working with the same dialogue coach as in Bridget Jones.

"It was just lazy," she said. "The truth is I just want it to be habit because I don't want to think about it."

She said she suspected the press attention given to her accent and weight made for exciting tabloid headlines. She became media fodder after gaining weight to play Bridget Jones -- for which she received the first of two best actress Oscar nominations. Zellweger won a best supporting actress Academy Award for her role in 2003's Cold Mountain.

"It's disheartening, because it is a reflection of what it is that we value," she said. "And it is a superficiality that does not deserve the focus of energy that it gets; it's boring. And it sends wrong messages."

But the amicable Zellweger is mostly positive about her experience. And while she is not actively seeking British roles -- "it's just been sort of chance" -- she said she has long felt a calling.

"I love British humour and the way people communicate. That, and Paul McCartney comes from England. From the age of about 4, I knew it was a destination," she said. "Good things come from England!"

- REUTERS

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