LONG BEFORE SHE STEPPED INTO
the ruby slippers of the Hollywood
icon, Renée Zellweger had a special
connection to Judy Garland. “My
parents were sort of selective
about who was celebrated in our
house, and she was always there,”
the Texas native, 50, says of her
childhood. “We watched her films
and there she was on the turntable
and I was always aware when they
were doing a rerun of one of her
shows. We’d gather around and
watch. I didn’t know about any of
the challenges that she was grap-
pling with later in her life.”
Those dark days are depicted in
Judy (out Sept. 27), directed by the-
ater veteran Rupert Goold. In a
staggering performance certain to
catapult her into the Oscar race,
Zellweger plays the Wizard of Oz
star at her lowest point, and sings
many of her most cherished songs,
including “Over the Rainbow.”
Broke and unemployable because
of her addictions, the star was
forced to leave her children in L.A.
in the winter of 1968 and perform
shows at London’s Talk of the
Town nightclub. Among Garland
devotees, the singer’s wildly erratic
gigs there—sometimes brilliant,
often disastrous—are legendary.
The following year, on June 22,
Garland died of an overdose. “I
found it fascinating that a woman
who began working at 2 could find
herself living under such stressful
circumstances after so many years
of work,” says Zellweger. “And then
to see her lampooned in a lot of the
retelling of her story—you know,
from my little experience with it,
I know that there’s more to it. That
there are omissions.”
Zellweger couldn’t be more dif-
ferent from Garland, but she’s
already proved herself to be a cha-
meleon. After breaking out as Tom
Cruise’s love interest in Jerry
Maguire in 1996, Zellweger nabbed
her first Oscar nomination by play-
ing the titular English singleton in
2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, and a
year later, she earned her second
Oscar nod by wowing critics as
singing, dancing murderess Roxie
Hart in Chicago. In 2003, her role
as strong-willed Ruby in Cold
Mountain won her an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Still, learning to speak in Gar-
land’s distinctive voice—and having
to sing her immortal songs live on
camera—was an entirely different
challenge. “I never tried to hit any
of those notes before—I mean,
maybe in the shower it was a good
idea,” Zellweger says with a laugh.
“So I started the vocal training and
the practical training that I could,
just to see what that felt like and to
see what was necessary in order to
actually make that sound.” Zellwe-
ger also had to match the pitch and
raspiness of Garland’s cadence,
which by 1968 had been altered by
years of alcohol and drug abuse. If
Judy finds its heroine at rock bot-
tom, Zellweger says portraying her
never made her despair: “I guess if
JUDY
HER JOY AND HER
WIT AND HER
KINDNESS AND
HER HUMOR NEVER
LEFT. SHE WAS
WILDLY FUNNY.”
RENÉE ZELLWEGER
1
No
MOVIES
ILLUSTRATION BY TIM O'BRIEN EW●COM OCTOBER 2019 9
