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Renée Zellweger captures an Oscar for ‘Judy,’ becoming the third Texan to be awarded best actress

The UT grad from Katy, Texas, born to immigrant parents, has now won two Oscars, her first for best supporting actress in the 2003 film ‘Cold Mountain.’

Renée Zellweger, who grew up in Katy, Texas, as the daughter of European immigrants, captured her second Oscar on Sunday night, this time as best actress for her bravura star turn in Judy, about the troubled life of musical legend Judy Garland.

As she had previously in the movie musical Chicago, Zellweger sang her own songs, disdaining even the thought of lip syncing. Her victory makes her the third woman from Texas to win an Oscar for best actress. Quitman native Sissy Spacek won in 1980 for her performance in Coal Miner’s Daughter, and San Antonio-born Joan Crawford won in 1945 for her role in Mildred Pierce.

In her acceptance speech, Zellweger paid tribute to American heroes — in particular the legend whose life she portrayed. She prefaced her remarks by thanking “my immigrant folks who came here with nothing but each other and a belief in the American Dream. How about this?”

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The past year, she said, “has been a really cool reminder that our heroes unite us — the best among us who inspire us to find the best in ourselves. They unite us.”

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Renée Zellweger accepts the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Judy" during the...
Renée Zellweger accepts the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Judy" during the 92nd Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on February 9, 2020.(MARK RALSTON / AFP via Getty Images)

She saluted astronaut Sally Ride, labor leader Dolores Huerta, tennis stars “Venus and Serena [Williams] and [fallen pop star] Selena, Bob Dylan, [Martin] Scorsese, Fred Rogers, Harriet Tubman ... We agree on our teachers, and we agree on our courageous men and women in uniform. We agree on our first responders and firefighters. And when we celebrate our heroes, we’re reminded of who we are, as one people — united.”

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And the woman she portrayed is, she said, such a hero.

“Judy Garland did not receive this honor in her time. I am certain that this moment is an extension of the celebration of her legacy that began on our film set and is also representative of the fact that her legacy of unique exceptionalism and inclusivity and generosity of spirit, it transcends anyone’s artistic achievement. Ms. Garland, you are certainly among the heroes that unite and define us. And this is certainly for you.”

For the Texas actress, Judy represents a comeback at age 50, since she went six years with her name not appearing on a single marquee, between My Own Love Song (2010) and a pair of films in in 2016, The Whole Truth and Bridget Jones’ Baby.

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Renée Zellweger arrives for the 92nd Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on...
Renée Zellweger arrives for the 92nd Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on Feb. 9, 2020.(Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

In 2017, she appeared in Same Kind of Different As Me, based on the bestselling book by Dallas businessman Ron Hall.

“Renée is a true star that makes you feel like you are her best friend from high school,” Hall said. “She’s just a regular ol’ Texas gal from her head to her boots and proud of her Longhorn roots. On the set of Same Kind of Different As Me, she would sit and chat with anyone and everyone in sight, then follow up with a text or handwritten note telling you how much she enjoyed the visit! I doubt there has ever been another Oscar winner as humble and thoughtful as Renée.”

This image released by Roadside Attractions shows Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in a scene...
This image released by Roadside Attractions shows Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland in a scene from "Judy."(David Hindley / AP)

Ann Hornaday, the film critic of The Washington Post, said recently on the podcast, The Tony Kornheiser Show, that Zellweger deserved to win — and then explained why.

The critic called the Texan’s performance one “that transcended the movie that it’s in … I left that film in a trance, almost. And it’s not because she was note-to-note doing an impression — she was channeling [Judy Garland]. The physical commitment is so admirable. The big test is that first big number she does. And you go, ‘Uh-oh, is she going to be able to do this?’ And she does. She just nails it. There’s a thrill about that that you cannot take away from her."

Renée Zellweger relaxes during a portrait  session at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in 1998.
Renée Zellweger relaxes during a portrait session at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in 1998.(Stefanchik, Joe)

Our own association with Zellweger goes back to Sept. 13, 1998, when we published a High Profile about her after interviewing her in her penthouse suite at The Mansion on Turtle Creek. There, the budding superstar was comfortably barefoot and surrounded by enough bread and chocolate to feed the entire Cowboys roster.

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“Golly,” she said, invoking one of her favorite words — which, yes, she spoke in a Texas accent. (Zellweger recently ignited a Twitter storm, when people simply couldn’t believe she spoke in a Texas twang while accepting a Golden Globe for her performance in Judy.)

During our visit in 1998, she marveled at what it felt like to be a movie star, one that people were just beginning to notice. It struck her like an overnight sensation, as she zoomed from private person to public figure, one that strangers all over the world began to recognize.

It was when she landed at DFW in 1998 that the new thing started happening — a small crowd was waiting to meet her, holding stacks of a newly published magazine, whose cover she graced in a shimmering red gown.

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“It was strange,” she said, “and rather embarrassing.”

It’s one thing to have a person ask for an autograph, Zellweger said, but quite another when a passer-by spots you in a West Coast airport and makes a call from three states away to signal an army of friends, who race over to greet you and are standing there waiting.

At the gate.

“Golly,” she said.

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Renée Zellweger relaxes during a portrait session at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in 1998.
Renée Zellweger relaxes during a portrait session at The Mansion on Turtle Creek in 1998. (Stefanchik, Joe / 119369)

For Zellweger, the transformation started in 1996, after her star turn in Jerry Maguire, in which her co-headliner was matinee idol Tom Cruise. Suddenly, she was a star. The film remains a pop-culture staple in Dallas, because of its numerous cameos by members of the then-Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys. Heck, there was even a speaking part for quarterback Troy Aikman.

So, when Zellweger came to Dallas in 1998, she was ushered in as a celebrated figure. She came in ’98 to promote her next big film, One True Thing, starring William Hurt and her hero and role model, Meryl Streep.

That, of course, feels like an eternity ago. Zellweger has since appeared in more than two-dozen films and television shows and on hundreds of magazine covers sold in supermarkets from Bangor to Barstow. She has gained weight, for the wildly popular Bridget Jones series — and lost it. She has also emerged (with ease) as a singer and dancer, and in 2003, she captured her first Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in the movie Cold Mountain, in which she co-starred with Nicole Kidman. She has won multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA awards, most recently for Judy.

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And now, she’s even a household name at her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, where her fellow alumni and closest friends include Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey. As she told us that day at The Mansion, she’d initially hoped to work for the school paper, The Daily Texan. But after a rush of reluctance, she backed out and changed her major — from journalism to literature. The bigger news was, she had found her calling: She was going to be an actress.

Hollywood actress Renée Zellweger poses in front of a poster of 'Bridget Jones: The Edge of...
Hollywood actress Renée Zellweger poses in front of a poster of 'Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason' during a press conference in Taipei on Dec. 3, 2004.(SAM YEH / AFP/Getty Images)

She telephoned her immigrant parents, Emil and Kjellfrid Irene Zellweger, to share her epiphany. Her mom remembers her saying, “Now, I know what I’ve been missing in my life all this time.”

She did so with the bravery and determination of Dorothy Boyd in Jerry Maguire, an accountant who gives up a secure job (with benefits!) to chase after a flaky sports agent, who, despite a history of shortcomings, feels like the man for her. Even more important, she believes in him.

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Zellweger knows the feeling. She believed in herself from the beginning, so much so that, for a year or more as an aspiring actress, she drove back and forth from Austin to Irving, shooting commercials at the Studios at Las Colinas.

One experience in particular told her that maybe she’d made the right choice. In the midst of a blistering heat wave, she was shooting a commercial for the American Beef Export Commission, whose producers intended to show it on television in Japan.

A Victorian mansion in San Marcos was made up to look like an all-girls school. It required her and the other actresses to wear wool skirts, wool sweaters, wool socks up to their knees and wool berets.

“There we were, playing tug-of-war under a scorching sun, jumping over ant beds that were knee-high and wearing our wool berets. And you know something?” she said in her penthouse suite at The Mansion. "I had a ball! I thought, ‘Golly, if I can tolerate this, if I can have this much fun, then, by golly, there must be something going on here.’ "

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Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain, for which she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in...
Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain, for which she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in 2004. ([credit: Phil Bray / digital file)

Her career was born in Texas, in her own version of Graceland — Austin. She first appeared as an extra in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1994), in which McConaughey plays a sleazy twenty-something who hangs out only with adolescent girls. Standing outside a pool, he’s sizing up the passing parade.

As Zellweger strolled by, he said, “That’s what I like about high school girls.”

Inauspicious, maybe, but a start that seemed to trigger an avalanche of bit parts and, finally, real roles with grit and substance.

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Since that moment, Zellweger has proven that above all she’s versatile. In A Price Above Rubies (2001), she played a Hasidic wife tormented by the choices she’s made. She has appeared as a singer and dancer in Chicago (2002), as a Civil War heroine in Cold Mountain (2003) and as a woman with a vision in Same Kind of Different As Me (2017).

More than 20 years have passed since a screening of One True Thing at the now-defunct Cinema NorthPark I & II, an event she attended with her family and where Zellweger the newborn star appeared, well, self-conscious. She talked fast; she giggled a lot. She blushed when asked the question most often posed by women:

What was it like kissing Tom Cruise?

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"I'm sure it was everything you imagine and more," she said, sounding like a football coach who's answered the same banal clunker a hundred times before.

But during our nearly daylong interview, she was, as they say, a different person. Pensive, articulate, insightful, she admitted having to fall in love with a character before saying yes to the part. She particularly enjoys strong women. And she has played several who find themselves falling for or trying to rescue men who are nowhere near their match.

When Cruise’s name came up, she preferred to talk about the choice he made in agreeing to play Jerry Maguire, man who spends an entire movie trying to find himself, only to learn that, in the end, the heart matters most.

“I loved watching Tom take that risk,” she said. “To be America’s leading man, and to literally fall on your face . . .”

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Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger in the movie, 'Jerry Maguire'
Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger in the movie, 'Jerry Maguire'(TriStar / HANDOUT)

Her lingering disappointment with Jerry Maguire was seeing Mr. Cruise not win an Oscar, though critics say an even bigger crime was her being snubbed for a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

Working with the likes of Cruise and Streep is proof “that I’ve been incredibly lucky, incredibly blessed,” she said, gazing at her suite at The Mansion. “Just look at this. This is the kind of place that a dozen of my friends and I might have been able to afford for one night if we all pooled our money and decided to go wild. I mean, this is amazing.”

After our meeting with Zellweger in 1998, we had the privilege of interviewing members of her family.

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“We don’t care for violent movies,” said her mom, Kjellfrid Irene Zellweger. “But she had to have something to show to get auditions in other jobs. It seems like, for a young lady starting out, you have to do violent movies or take your clothes off, which is not acceptable to us at all.”

Partly at her parents’ request but mostly of her own volition, Zellweger has set for herself a policy: Like her hero and former co-star, Streep, she won’t do nude scenes.

Knowing the strait-laced and obedient daughter who happened to be his sister growing up, brother Drew howled with laughter at watching the female lead of Love and a .45 curse like a sailor and gleefully pull the trigger while gunning down cops.

“Oh, my, if you could have known Renée,” Drew said with a hearty laugh. “It was funny to hear her talk like that. She was not that way at all growing up.” And then he said: “The first time I ever saw my sister kiss anybody was in Love and a .45, and that was weird enough. Before Jerry Maguire, I said, “Renée, I’m not going to the movie if you’re nude. So let me know.' As it was, I’ve never been so proud of anybody — ever — than I am of her.”

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Renée Zellweger in the movie 'Chicago.'
Renée Zellweger in the movie 'Chicago.'(David James / cd)

Jerry Maguire was her first legitimate big break. Director Cameron Crowe said no to at least four actresses — Winona Ryder, Bridget Fonda, Marisa Tomei and Mira Sorvino — before settling on the varsity cheerleader from Katy.

At the time, Crowe said, “The freshness of going with somebody like this is great. She’s sort of a Billy Wilder-style heroine. She cries when she could be laughing, and she laughs when she could be crying. It makes for some very lively emotion.”

Her performance vindicated his decision.

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The late Roger Ebert wrote that Zellweger’s “lovability is one of the key elements in a movie that starts out looking cynical and quickly becomes a heart-warmer.”

“One of the neat things about the characters that I play is that it’s so easy to get lost in them,” Zellweger said. “I’ve loved every one of them.”

In our interview, her mother praised her for “being a person of high moral character and a deep thinker, who weighs every option very carefully. Maybe that has shaped the choices she’s made. But she also makes movies because she believes in what she’s doing. She doesn’t make movies for money or fame, and that makes a difference too.”

Some critics have called her a young Meryl Streep, which causes her to laugh out loud.

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“I would never, I would never . . . That’s huge for me. I think she’s wonderful!” she said, albeit in 1998. “She’s so phenomenally talented. I love what she does. I’ve gotten so much from her in my life that she has absolutely no idea about.”

Such as?

"Just from watching her. The things she can make you feel . . . It's just incredible. You really do have the experience that her characters have. You feel what they feel, and that's a tremendous gift.

“I wish she’d have grabbed me by the collar and said, ‘Now, you go over there and you do this and you do that. That was a bad choice and you try it this way.’ I wish she’d have given me line readings. I wish she’d have told me where to stand and how to move my arms. I wish she’d have done the whole thing for me, because she’s the best at what she does.”

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Renée Zellweger and Meryl Streep in the movie, 'One True Thing.'
Renée Zellweger and Meryl Streep in the movie, 'One True Thing.'(Eli Reed / Universal City Studios)

She learned a lot about quality from her parents, who also demonstrated a love of adventure and a willingness to take risks.

Her father, Emil Zellweger, was born in Switzerland but moved to Australia when he was 12. He met his wife, a native of Norway, on a boat in Denmark, between Copenhagen and Oslo.

After fate brought them together, Kjellfrid Irene returned to Norway and Emil to London, where he was working. They kept in contact, writing letters, getting together for a second, longer meeting in Norway, and eventually finding out that they had to spend their lives together.

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Having wanted to come to America, Kjellfrid Irene got a job as a governess for a family living in Houston. Emil stayed in London but joined her the following summer. They were married in August 1963.

Drew and Renée were born in Houston, where the Zellwegers lived until moving to Baytown and finally Katy, which both children consider home. A small town, it seemed an odd place for a Hollywood star growing up in the 1970s. No movie theater, no cable TV.

Kjellfrid Irene remembers a baby girl who had “lots of energy,” who became a child with a vivid imagination and a need to succeed that drives her even now.

“She was very competitive, a winner in everything she tried,” her mother said. “And she tried everything, from gymnastics to swimming to school plays.”

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Her father says she “was a good runner” who ran competitively in high school and won dozens of medals. But despite her familiarity with the stage throughout adolescence, her professional career has been relegated to movies.

Zellweger’s mother feels proud of having raised a daughter who reaped the benefits “of security, of growing up in a family that has a good, solid marriage at the core. It means a lot to feel that security all your life. I think it’s helped her in her career and her life.”

And now, with two Oscars on her resume, it proves her mother knew what she was talking about all along.

Researcher Meagan Hurley assisted in the reporting of this article.

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