Renee Zellweger Keeping Up --

Renee Zellweger Keeping up -- and down with Jones: The Fluctuating Weight of Renee Zellweger It is fine for an actress to be fat in Hollywood -- provided that actress is clearly temporarily fat solely for the purposes of her art, not because the actress might actually have the natural physique of an average American woman. No screen persona illustrates this fact better than Rene Zellweger. Zellweger began her major motion picture career as the 'girl next door' to Tom Cruise's sports agent next door.

However, the native-born Texan's real fame as a celebrity only took off after she agreed to personify the British novelist and journalist Helen Fielding's creation of Bridget Jones, in the film version of the 'chick lit' classic Bridget Jones' Diary. Bridget Jones' Diary struck a chord with many women on both sides of the 'pond.' It is a tale about a British woman who is obsessed with finding a man but even more obsessed with her constantly fluctuating weight.

In print, of course, although Jones calculates her weight in minute day-to-day detail, it is difficult to assess whether the main character's obsessions with her inches and pounds are due to the media's pushing the insecure Jones into self-hatred of her normal physique, or if the main character could actually stand to 'lose a few.' But the filmmakers of "Bridget Jones' Diary" decided to leave no doubt about the character's overweight status.

Thus the film justified Jones' self-hatred of her own body in a series of humiliating shots of the character in tight pantyhose and even tighter and ill-fitting Playboy Bunny costume. To play Jones, the filmmakers hired an American actress to embody the British creation, thus clearly denoting the difference between the petite Zellweger and the pudgy Bridget in both the actress' nationality as well as her physique. Then, the filmmakers widely promoted the film by advertising Zellweger's heroic weight gain as well as her mastery of a perfect British accent.

Typical of the interviews given during the promotion for the first Jones film are as follows: " Renee Zellweger is an actress born and bred in Texas, slender and cheerful...But for seven months she was Bridget Jones, book publishing company publicist, 129 lbs., witty and veddy, veddy British." (Kim, 2001) of course, the article implies, to be 5'5, as is Zellweger and 129 pounds, is the antithesis of slender.

Zellweger spoke of the weariness of having to eat so much, saying that her consumption "was boringly technical, frankly, truly...We went to the physician and I said 'This is what I would like to do.' And he did the math, and he made the list, and said 'Here's what you'll have to add if you want to achieve X,' so we just implemented that into the day." The actress implies that she would never wish to eat that much, but transformed her body under strictly clinical circumstances.

(Kim, 2001) The interviewer lavishly, almost voyeuristically chronicles what the actress ate during the film's making, saying "but the volume of food -- breakfast was an omelet with croissant, butter and weight-gain milkshake -- sometimes became overwhelming for the diminutive actress, who found herself substituting Cadbury dairy milks instead." (Kim, 2001) After some prompting, Zellweger confesses, "it was nice to say [for once], 'I'd better have a garlic bread with this pizza. it's for the good of the film..

it's my responsibility to have that piece of pie." (Kim, 2001) But although Zellweger insists she loved being "being voluptuous and really womanly" the question remains -- why not hire an actress more physically suited for the role of Bridget Jones? And what does it say about Hollywood that actresses are required to gain weight to look like 'real people,' even real people in the media business, like Bridget Jones? Furthermore, why should it come as such a surprise that an actress should alter her physique and lifestyle to embody a character? After all, actresses and actors are supposed to be protean, or shape shifting by definition, are they not? But when Zellweger showed her newly slim physique to the world, despite her command performance as Jones, her weight loss was what drew raves, as high in quality as her acting in the role may have been.

And although, Zellweger was eager to note that she hadn't shaken her alter ego off completely. "I'd be out in the cab and asking the guy in an English accent," she sighs, shaking her head. "[I say] 'brilliant, lovely,' all those things. 'Quite,' I say 'quite' a lot now.. " she was also eager to find a film to show off her return to slenderness. Her thin sculpted frame in her next release in "Chicago" assured the world that Zellweger was still capable of high glamour.

Her weighty photos for one fashion magazine never made it to print, but newly slender, she graced the cover of Vogue. When an actress such as Kristie Alley, a former beauty queen, gains weight not for a role but because of age and childbearing, the world grows uncomfortable.

Zellweger's ease at weight loss suggests that transformation and reinvention are always possible -- that is what an actress is supposed to do, correct -- to suggest that human beings do not have to be one self? But actors like Robert DeNiro have also gained weight for roles and after DeNiro packed on the pounds for "Raging Bull," interviewers did not ooh and ah about how slight he looked on the red carpet accepting his awards for that film, as did the interviewer of Zellweger's appearance at the Golden Globes after losing weight after the first Jones film.

Women in Hollywood can only get heavy 'in quotes,' in a way that reinforces rather than detracts from their glamour. For the sequel to "Bridget Jones' Diary," Zellweger's weight gain became part of the promotion, now that her acquisition.