As Renee Zellweger comes back from her six-year hiatus from Hollywood to promote her new film Bridget Jones’s Baby, the 47-year-old actress is baffled as to why everyone is only interested in talking about her looks.
In an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, the Texas-born star got fired up after she was questioned about ageing in the showbiz industry.
“I’ve never seen the maturation of a woman as a negative thing,” Renee said in the cover story.
“I’ve never seen a woman stepping into her more powerful self as a negative. But this conversation perpetuates the problem.”
She went on to add, “Why are we talking about how women look? Why do we value beauty over contribution?”
“We don’t seem to value beauty over contribution for men. It’s simply not a conversation.”
The 47-year-old actress says men’s looks aren’t under anywhere near as much scrutiny as women’s
The fascination with Renee’s face has been ongoing since she stepped out at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood Awards in 2014, sparking speculation she’s had plastic surgery.
She put the rumours to bed after explaining that her different looks were a result of being “healthy” and simply getting “older”.
Or so she thought.
The issue re-surfaced when a film critic for Variety questioned the actress’ looks in a piece titled Renee Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress? in June.
Renee responded in an essay penned for Huffington Post, in which she wrote, “Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes.”
In the piece titled We Can Do Better, the actress also pointed out that the media’s focus on trivial things like appearance “increasingly takes air time away from the countless significant unprecedented current events affecting our world.”
