As you’re probably aware by now, yesterday the internet got thrown for a loop when Renée Zellweger showed up at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards red carpet with a face that . . . didn’t look like Renée Zellweger’s face. As Vince pointed out on FilmDrunk later in the day, the stages of the internet reacting to Renée Zellweger’s face went something like “OMG! Renée Zellweger’s face!” to “How dare you acknowledge that Renée Zellweger has a new face” to finally “What Renée Zellweger’s new face says about us, as a society.”
It was a long day.
But in all this talk about Renée Zellweger’s face, we’re leaving out the opinion of one very crucial individual — and that would be of Ms. Zellweger herself. In response to the varied reactions, Renée Zellweger reached out to People to give an exclusive statement to personally address the comments.
“I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows,” Zellweger, 45, says of the attention she received after an appearance at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards in Beverly Hills on Monday.
Calling the conversation about her appearance “silly,” she says she is choosing to address it because “it seems the folks who come digging around for some nefarious truth which doesn’t exist won’t get off my porch until I answer the door.”
“My friends say that I look peaceful. I am healthy,” Zellweger continues. “For a long time I wasn’t doing such a good job with that. I took on a schedule that is not realistically sustainable and didn’t allow for taking care of myself. Rather than stopping to recalibrate, I kept running until I was depleted and made bad choices about how to conceal the exhaustion. I was aware of the chaos and finally chose different things.”
I can’t speculate on the reasons women (or even men, in many cases) go to extreme lengths, but for her sake — I really, truly hope that all of what she says is true.