Five Interesting Minutes With Renee Zellweger

In Leatherheads, star/director George Clooney’s opus about the nascent days of professional football, Renee Zellweger plays a feisty, strong-headed, forward-thinking investigative journalist from Chicago out to debunk the myth that's grown up around WWI-hero-turned-college-football-star Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski). I sat down recently with the actress to discuss her love of period movies, Lexie Littleton's profession, and the burden of her own celebrity.

Cole Haddon: Most people don't realize it, but just about every role you take is in a period movie like Leatherheads. Is there a reason for that?

Renee Zellweger: I find the further removed the character's reality is removed from my own, the more fun it is. I really enjoy [period movies]. I love it. In fact, I'm much more comfortable in corsets or 1920s dresses than just being the girl who looks like me and might have the same wardrobe as I do. I feel too safe playing the girl who looks like me; there’s not enough to hide behind.

CH: You play Lexie Littleton, an investigative journalist in Leatherheads. As someone who's had her share of run-ins with "investigative journalism," like the kind your character is pressured into carrying out, what did you think about Lexie's career decisions?

RZ: Oh, I don't know if I'd like her job a lot.

CH: Why not?

RZ: I understand the responsibility journalists have to reporting the truth. We're at an interesting crossroads of that right now; I find there isn't as much accountability anymore, and you don't necessarily have to report the truth, you just have to be first. News has become a commodity, and that's frightening to me because I think there's a better way to make money. But yeah, I don't know if I’d be comfortable with having that much responsibility in shaping another person's life. Especially if I knew I could do damage to it.

CH: How do you deal with the type of journalism that accompanies celebrity these days?

RZ: It's the hardest part of my job. I have the most difficult time with the days people don't see you, hear you, or communicate with you beyond who they perceive you to be before they meet you. I have a hard time with that. I work every day to neutralize it, and to be the person who's [sitting] here. That's all I know.

CH: Is it harder now than it was ten years ago?

RZ: I guess so. Because I’m older right now, and the things I really crave are hardest to come by because of that. As an actress, you draw on the truth of experiences and I can [only] draw on the truth of experiences from twenty years ago because that was the last real exchange I had with a person. I want to have real conversations. I want to be a fly on the wall in a room. I want to be able to people watch and have different sociological experiences. I know it sounds so crazy, but, boy, I cherish it when somebody's mean because they're having a bad day and they don't recognize [I] know Tom Cruise and alter their behavior in some way. I love it, I love it when the stewardess is just nasty. I do. It makes me shrink when she comes back and apologizes because she didn't realize [who I was], know what I mean?

CH: Um…not really.

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