Friday, 29 December 2006

Renée Zellweger: Why can't a Texas girl play a Brit?

She's played Bridget Jones and now Beatrix Potter

BRenée Zellweger may hail from Texas, but that doesn't mean she can't play a Brit – she won raves as Bridget Jones and is now nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as The Tale of Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter in Miss Potter.

But playing this latest British icon caused a bit of a scandal in the U.K. "I guess the difference was there are clearly more people to disappoint," Zellweger, 37, tells Reuters. "I won't say that Helen Fielding didn't create a character that was embraced by British culture, but Beatrix was a part of the fiber of British literature in a very substantial way."

The film's director, Chris Noonan, was more blunt. "They are ashamed of it in England; they have got an American playing this English character," he joked at a press conference recently.

But Zellweger says she took pains to lose her Southern twang and perfect the English accent. "It is just work. It is part of the process," she says. "It's much more exciting to talk about blaspheming the language because you're from Texas, I guess."

She says she doesn't seek out roles as British women – "it's just been sort of chance" – but has long had a case of Anglophilia. "I love British humor and the way people communicate. That, and Paul McCartney comes from England. From the age of about 4, I knew it was a destination," she says. "Good things come from England!"

And she sounds more Piccadilly Circus than Katy, Texas (her hometown), when talking about reports of a third Bridget Jones movie: "I said 'bollocks,' " she says. "I said there was no truth to it at all."