page_title: Renée Zellweger
section_title: Career downturn and hiatus, 2008–2015
hierarchical_section_title: Renée Zellweger / Career / Career downturn and hiatus, 2008–2015
caption_attribution_description: English: Renée Zellweger at Tribeca Film Festival 2010.
context_page_description: Renée Kathleen Zellweger
  is an American actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. She was one of the world's highest-paid actresses by 2007 and was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year in 2009.
  Born in Texas, Zellweger studied English Literature at UT Austin. Initially aspiring to a career in journalism, she was drawn to acting following her brief work on stage during college. Following her film debut with a minor role in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, Zellweger's first starring role came with the slasher film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Receiving praise for her performances in the independent films Love and a .45 and The Whole Wide World, Zellweger rose to prominence with starring roles in Jerry Maguire, One True Thing, Me, Myself and Irene, and Nurse Betty, winning her first Golden Globe Award for the lattermost.
  For her portrayals of Bridget Jones in the romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary and Roxie Hart in the musical crime drama Chicago, Zellweger garnered consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
context_section_description: With George Clooney in his directorial venture, the period comedy Leatherheads (2008), about the early years of professional American football, Zellweger portrayed a Chicago Tribune newspaper reporter. The film received largely mixed reviews and made  US$13.5 million in its opening weekend, described as "disappointing" by website Box Office Mojo. MTV.com praised the actress for "displaying an unexpected gift for drawling sarcasm", but Kevin Williamson for website Jam! criticized her role, remarking that she, "as the kind of lippy heroine epitomized by Rosalind Russell, is miscast in a role that demands snark, not sleepy-eyed sweetness". In the western Appaloosa (2008), Zellweger played a beguiling widow opposite Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. The film earned critical acclaim but grossed a modest US$20 million at the North American box office. Zellweger produced the made-for-television feature Living Proof, starring Harry Connick Jr., about the true story of Dr. Denny Slamon. It was co-produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, and premiered in October 2008 on Lifetime Television.
  Her next film was the 2009 comedy New in Town, in which she played a Miami high-powered consultant adjusting to her new life in a small Minnesota town. The movie rated poorly with reviewers and made a lackluster US$16 million in its domestic theatrical run. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated that her "rabbity, dimply pout – surely the strangest facial expression in Hollywood – simpers and twitches out of the screen in this moderate girly flick that adheres with almost religious fanaticism to the feelgood romcom handbook". In 2009, she also provided her voice for a supporting character in DreamWorks' computer-animated 3D feature film Monsters vs. Aliens, and starred as the mother of actor George Hamilton in the comedy My One and Only, which despite being distributed for a limited release to certain parts of the United States only, was acclaimed by critics. Bill Gray, of Entertainment Weekly felt that she played her part "to her strengths", and reviewer Mick LaSalle found her performance to be a "standout".
  Zellweger took on the role of a social worker assigned to a mysterious girl in Case 39, a supernatural thriller she had filmed in 2006. The title had a lengthy post-production and was not released in theaters in the United States until 2010. It was universally panned by critics and only earned US$5.3 million in its opening weekend, leading Indiewire to write that Zellweger "faces an [u]ncertain [f]uture" as she was in "an unforgiving industry that doles out few juicy roles for women over 40." The road drama My Own Love Song, in which she played a former singer suffering from paralysis, was screened at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, and released for DVD.
  After My Own Love Song was released, Zellweger took a six-year hiatus from screen acting, as she found the time to "go away and grow up a bit". Reflecting on this period of time in a July 2016 interview with British Vogue, she explained: "I was fatigued and wasn't taking the time I needed to recover between projects, and it caught up with me [...] I got sick of the sound of my own voice". In 2013, Zellweger co-created and executive produced Cinnamon Girl, an original drama series set in the Hollywood movie and music scenes of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but the Lifetime network passed on the pilot.
caption: Zellweger at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
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