A critic wrote about Renée Zellweger's face and people are outraged
Universal/YouTube
On Tuesday, the trailer for the long-awaited third "Bridget Jones" movie, "Bridget Jones's Baby," hit the internet and highlighted the never dull life of our favorite love-seeking Brit.
But on Thursday, the conversation shifted to the film's star, Renée Zellweger, and how she looks in the trailer after Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic for Variety, wrote an opinion piece titled "Renee Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress?"
This is just the latest comment on Zellweger's looks, but perhaps the most surprising as the pieces comes from an entertainment trade outlet and written by a highly respected film critic.
In the piece Gleiberman wrote that, "Celebrities, like anyone else, have the right to look however they want, but the characters they play become part of us. I suddenly felt like something had been taken away," referring to watching Zellweger as Bridget Jones in the new trailer.
Commenting on how the media making references on if an actor has "had work done" is not allowed because the truth is "we don't know," he then goes on to write:
"In the case of Renée Zellweger, it may look to a great many people like something more than an elaborate makeup job has taken place, but we can’t say for sure. What we can say is that if that happened, it reflects something indescribably sad about our culture. For in addition to being a great actress, Zellweger, as much or more than any star of her era, has been a poster girl for the notion that each and every one of us is beautiful in just the way God made us."
After giving some highlights from Zellweger's career (and referring to her as a "nobody" before being cast opposite Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire"), Gleiberman ends his piece by stating that he hopes "Bridget Jones's Baby" "turns out to be a movie that stars Renée Zellweger rather than a victim of 'Invasion of the Face Snatchers.'"
Since the piece went online many have called out Gleiberman. Here are a few from Twitter:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/748713857707675648
@OwenGleiberman
Just out curiosity, have you ever written a full column on men's looks? Your piece on Renee is two degrees past bizarre.
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/748747678238945280
@OwenGleiberman how about U shame Hollywood for not allowing actresses to age gracefully instead of her pic.twitter.com/JQZK18X3Ce
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/748591115121594368
Oh good, another aging white man writes a tirade about how a woman should age, look, and present herself. YAY! pic.twitter.com/EbENU3xAKM
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/748873149547220992
Remember: it's HER face & body. Not yours. HERS.
This is not the first time there's been internet chatter over Zellweger's looks.
The 47-year-old actress, who was on a self-imposed break from acting since 2010 before starring in "The Whole Truth" (which has been released in other countries this year but hasn't played in the US yet), became a trending topic following remarks about how she looked after walking the red carpet for the first time in years at the 2014 Elle Awards.
In 2015, she responded to the attention her looks received to Entertainment Weekly: “What good comes from knowing that something like that happened? Less fear. Sure," she said at the time, also adding that she never read or watched coverage of how her appearance was covered by the media.
"All that I know about is what friends and associates would send in texts and emails," she said. "They were sending support, which means that I must have needed it, and I prefer it that way. So when people come up to me to ask ‘How did that feel?’ I don’t know, and I like it like that. I don’t know. I know it sounds pretty unlikely that a person might be able to make herself, I guess, keep clear of those words or of that experience, but I have and it takes effort. But I have succeeded.”
Watch the trailer for "Bridget Jones's Baby" below:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/5aaWY7rQS3I
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