Renée Zellweger

Renee Zellweger is an actress and producer known for playing Bridget Jones in 2001's Bridget Jones's Diary, Roxie Hart in 2002's Chicago, and Judy Garland in 2019's Judy.

She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 2003 drama Cold Mountain. She won a Golden Globe for her role in Judy.

Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas, to a Swiss father and a Norwegian mother. She attended Katy High School, where she was a cheerleader, gymnast, speech team member, and drama club member. After high school, she went to the University of Texas at Austin to major in English.

During her time in college, she took a drama class because she needed a fine arts credit to complete her degree, but the experience made her appreciate how much she loved acting. Zellweger has stated that she earned her Screen Actors Guild card doing a Coors Light beer commercial while in college.

After graduating in 1991, her first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, which Matthew McConaughey also starred in. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ends up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family.

She subsequently moved to Los Angeles, first becoming widely known to audiences around the world with Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played the romantic interest of Jerry, Tom Cruise's character.

Zellweger later won acclaim in One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman.

In May of 2005, Zellweger received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The following year, she produced and appeared in Miss Potter, a film based on the life story of acclaimed author Beatrix Potter.

After taking a six-year hiatus from acting, Zellweger returned in 2016 with Bridget Jones's Baby, which portrays Jones single in her forties as she discovers that she is pregnant and must work out who the father is.

In 2019, Zellweger first starred as Anne Montgomery in Mike Kelley's Netflix thriller series "What/If." That same year, she starred as Judy Garland in the biopic Judy, which details Garland's final years and her untimely death at the hands of a barbiturate overdose. She won an Oscar Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in JUDY.