The role Renée Zellweger will always regret never playing: “Totally committed to this”
What’s the first thing that springs to mind when someone tells you to picture Renee Zellweger?
That’s right, it’s Bridget Jones. Thanks to four helpings of the seemingly ever-popular ditzy PR woman with a never-ending line of upper-middle-class stuttering suitors, Zellweger is basically that character, and the two are interchangeable, forced to sob on a sofa for all eternity. They’ve even unveiled a statue of her in Leicester Square for crying out loud.
But it didn’t have to be that way. More than 20 years ago, Zellweger was about as feted by Hollywood as it’s possible to get, and she is not an actor without considerable talent; a double Oscar-winner in fact, which is not something many can lay claim to. Just 46 actors in Hollywood history have achieved that, putting her on par with luminaries like Elizabeth Taylor and Glenda Jackson.
So well-received was her performance in the first Bridget Jones movie in 2002, for which she scooped an Oscar nomination, that she was cast the following year in Chicago, the sexy musical with Richard Gere that was a massive hit, winning six Oscars and earning her another nomination plus a Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actress.
But she wasn’t done there – in 2004 she appeared in Cold Mountain alongside Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, an epic period drama of the kind the Academy loves. And sure enough, her performance earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, proving that not only could she do comedy and musicals, but she was a serious actor as well.
Around that time however, one role escaped her that you would imagine might have brought together her talents in a way that could have taken her from double Oscar winner to a treble, and that’s the long-awaited, and much attempted, biopic of the legendary rock singer Janis Joplin.
When Zellweger was attached to the project, it was called Piece of My Heart, and the news in 2003 was that everything was set for the Texan actor to play the tragic Texan singer the following year. One movie exec from the production company behind the film stated, “Renee has been obsessed with Janis for years and is totally committed to this. We are looking to quickly bring aboard a writer-director so that this can be the picture she makes after the sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
Joplin’s was a tragic tale; a member of the infamous ‘27 club’ she died far too early after gifting the world a talent for only around three years or so, beginning with a startling performance at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival and encompassing just three albums, two of which were solo efforts and included songs like ‘Mercedes Benz’ and her wonderful cover of Erma Franklin’s ‘Piece of My Heart’.
Despite her incredible voice and powerful stage presence, she was beset by personal issues and eventually got addicted to heroin, the drug that would kill her before her most famous album, Pearl, could be released.
In the end, Zellweger’s movie about Joplin never happened, along with several other attempts down the years with actors rumoured to play ‘The Pearl’, including Amy Adams, Zooey Deschanel and the late Brittany Murphy.
But Zellweger’s moment of playing an iconic musical star wasn’t lost, and in 2019, she played Judy Garland in the biographical drama Judy, performing her own vocals for the film, often in front of a live audience. It proved to be a masterstroke, with many calling it the best performance of her career, and earning her a raft of awards including another Golden Globe and that second Oscar, this time for Best Actress.
