RENEE ZELLWEGER

Lets DOWN Her GUARD. (Sort Of.)

- MICKEY RAPKIN

THE ACTOR has withstood THREE DECADES in an UNRELENTING SPOTLIGHT, emerging TIME and TIME again with an OSCAR in hand. Her NEXT ACT-ON SCREEN and OFF-is full of SURPRISES.

Renée Zellweger's rescue dog Chester needed a hip replacement. And so, just before the world shut down, the actor left her home in Topanga, a rustic canyon east of Malibu, and drove to the vet. Traffic can be notoriously unpredictable, and she passed the time listening to Dateline NBC's The Thing About Pam-like all of us, relaxing to a murder podcast.

Zellweger, 52, spent much of lockdown on her own, tending to endless projects around the house. “I was outside every day, building things and planting things," she says. “Nature does what it does and, you know, the squirrels and I were at war. Like, 'Why you gotta dig that big hole there?' I'm out there every day with my shovel and my bucket. Then I'm inside tinkering. 'Cause you get quiet and you get creative. Busyness is the enemy of creativity.” She studied her mom's native language, Norwegian, with one of those apps for your phone. (“Now my mom and I can have wonderful conversations about how dogs don't eat spiders," she says with a self-deprecating laugh.)

Those pioneer-woman vibes remind me of something an ex-boyfriend of Zellweger's, Jim Carrey, once said of her: “She thinks having a good time is renting a U-Haul and taking furniture to Texas. She's real in that way." Still is, apparently. Zellweger tells me about her 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid and how, before the pandemic, she took herself on a date to see the Avett Brothers play in Santa Barbara. Of seeing a concert alone, she says, "You can stay as long as you want! Dance as long as you want to, go to the bathroom you don't have to find somebody. Good luck!"