I guess I'm a pushover. Most everyone in the world doesn't really care for Renée Zellweger right now and why should we right? Maybe she was just a lucky flash in the pan? Many love to lambaste her for what they view as her unearned Oscar for Cold Mountain. I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for romantic epics. Perhaps she really was an awful Ruby Thewes and I need to watch it again. Eight years after her win, her career is in the crapper and she's supposedly going to put on that 15 lbs (I'm assuming at least that much; I mean, seeing how there is "baby" in the title, there must be some "baby weight," on top of her regular frame, no?) to play Bridget Jones for a third time. Weird to consider that Colin Firth is now a bigger star than she is. Will his name appear first in the credits and on posters like Jack Nicholson's in Batman? 
Neil Labute was a pretty big deal in the late 90s, and his Nurse Betty put her first and center on the awards radar with her Golden Globe-winning turn. One of the few actresses to receive back-to-back lead actress Oscar nominations in recent memory, her company includes Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, and Michelle Williams. It was during the height of career, both commercially and artistically. Many objected to American Zellweger's casting as the quintessentially British Bridget Jones back in 2000, but once audiences on both sides of the pond got to see her irresistible performance, she had everyone eating out of the palm of her hand. Not only did she open the movie to huge worldwide grosses, but she scored her first of three Oscar nominations. The next year would even be bigger when she won the much sought-after role of Roxie Hart in the movie version of Chicago, which is the highest grossing movie musical since Grease and won Best Picture that year as well. She would get awfully close to winning Best Actress, but would lose to Nicole Kidman, as Denzel Washington would put it best as he read the winner's name, "by a nose."She would actually team up with Kidman during that race in prestige project Cold Mountain, which would incur the wrath of many, including those who had tired of Harvey Weinstein's Oscar-grubbing (so why didn't they tire of it during The King's Speech or The Artist?). Only Zellweger would remain the clear winner and take home the gold ... for a supporting role. And there is something about that distinction that's important to note. Winning the supporting actress Oscar can mean many things; it all depends on what the winner's type is, as well as where they're at in their career. Zellweger's win felt much like a consolation prize on some levels. Though she had never been robbed of the Golden Man for her previous two nominations, she did likely come close to taking him home for Chicago. Her win for Mountain was strangely almost a demotion of sorts. It was as if her major leading lady days were over. And maybe they were.
She would go on to somewhat successfully open the Bridget Jones sequel. The reviews weren't as good and the domestic take fell short, but her international numbers were gangbusters. And she would continue to work with respectable filmmakers like Ron Howard and George Clooney, while also in choice roles for Miss Potter (which she also produced) and Appaloosa, but audiences were losing interest in her and she could no longer swim on her own. Three of the last films where her character drove the story bombed and one of them, which was Oscar bait I'm sure at one time, went straight to video (My Own Love Song). One of them, New In Town, was actually kind of cute and another, My One and Only, received acceptable reviews.
If you consider this fun fact: she has played characters in more decades than probably many of her contemporaries: 1860s (Cold Mountain), 1880s (Appaloosa), 1890s/1900s (Miss Potter), 20s (Chicago, Leatherheads), 30s (The Whole Wide World, Cinderella Man), 50s (My One and Only), 60s (Down With Love), 70s (Dazed and Confused), etc. Today, Zellweger turns 43.
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