Top Ten Most Important Things About This Photo of The Zeéeeee That Everyone Is Talking About Today
Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 4:17PM It's a special top ten day. List mania all day long...
10 Renée has reemerged again but there's still no firm word on future movies other than The Whole Truth with Keanu Reeves, directed by Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) which is due next year supposedly
09 Sarah Paulson looks AHMAZING
08 Long rectangular table at these events are terrible because you only get to talk to a couple of people except when everyone is milling about.
07 If you squint really hard you can pretend Sarah & Renée are non-identical siamese sisters they're so squinched together...
06 Bet you anything they talked about American Horror Story - weird that Ryan Murphy hasn't asked the Zeéeeee to do it? (Although his tastes do run a little more 1980s/1990s than 1990s/2000s as actresses go.)
05 Everyone in this photo has major trophies except for Sarah Paulson and that ain't right!
04 Everyone looks like they color coordinated. Did Elle magazine send out a dress code?
03 Down With Love Reunion. Woot. Such a good movie
02 Warren Beatty Photobomb! Hi, Warren.
01 If that's The Bening by Warren's side this photographer needs to be fined for cropping her out. Framing! The photographer has apparently cropped out Jessica Lange (w/ Warren). You don't do that photographer. Framing!
Reader Comments (42)
Had some work done Renee?
THANK YOU NATHANIEL.
Thank you.
This is exactly where the conversation should end and you are a shining light.
She looks like Sarah Jessica Parker. What a weird career. Three Oscar nods in row, a win, and then virtually nothing. Was it her choice? Did she and Harvey have a fight? Very odd.
Now Paulson on the other hand. Talk about a even bigger breakthrough waiting to happen. She slayed American Horror Story:Asylum, and continues to be ground the more campy proceedings of Coven and Freakshow, doing great work with less than great characters. She's always been reliably good in her small screen parts so far, and I dare say she was best in show in 12 Years a Slave. I can definitely see a big awards breakthrough for her much sooner than later.
That's Jessica Lange talking to Beatty; I can tell by the tattoo. In other news, I think I might be ridiculous for knowing that.
That does not even look like Renee. WTF?
That's Zellweger!? Holy crap she's unrecognizable.
I miss Renee. My favorite performance of hers was her depressed Hollywood actress in "White Oleander," a movie I think was underrated because it was a "woman's picture." For some reason I've always allowed that performance to bleed into my image of her, and so I see her as essentially fragile and kind. To my eyes there's actually less of the taut lemony squint that she used to have from whatever work she's had done. I think she looks better, as if she could age into better character roles.
Aging is tough enough for actresses of a certain age in Hollywood and its of upsetting how the blogosphere and media reacts to actresses who have age and are no longer recognizable. You can never win! Leave her alone!! She still looks the same to me!!
Renee,
Please come back to the movies, every project of yours that is announced but we never see happen, makes my heart burn,and sure, your oscar win is the most divisive of the last few decades, but the audience still loves you and all this talk about you being a plastic surgery obsessed has-been is making me very upset.
Sincerely,
A fan.
I think sometimes, the industry does push back against actresses (but rarely actors...funny how that is) who win the Oscar and also make no bones about the fact that they really REALLY want it. Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow come to mind as an example. Anne Hathaway also comes to mind as someone who got really polarizing reactions for being so naked about the fact that she wanted it. Actresses really have to walk that fine line between the gushing hard sell (which the Academy likes) and wanting it "too much," which can make them turn against you. It's sexist and unfair, of course. She won for a performance and a film that I think a lot of people, fairly or not, saw as kind of calculated, made from whole cloth Oscar baiting. When you look at how generally muted the enthusiasm was for Renee in the room when won, a lot of her absence and career stumbles after Cold Mountain make sense in that context. In that cast, I sort of applaud her because I don't know that my ego/self-esteem could survive any of that. It's one of the few things that I don't envy about famous actresses' lives.
Olivia-I am in love with the fact that you knew that based on Lange's tattoo.
Olivia & Jestifer - IMPRESSIVE, yes.
All of this just makes me so sad. *sigh*
Y'all can willfully suspend your disbelief all you want, but homegirl looks like a different person. I mean, she looks good, but not the same Renee I loved from Bridget Jones, Jerry Maguire, Chicago. Meh. I would say the blogosphere is worse to actresses who refuse to age gracefully. Plenty have!
You can't discuss the filmsthe choices,the oscars without at least mentioning her different not that different look,time again major actresses alter their faces and thus see their careers slide,it is unfair but unless your Meryl or Julianne you can't really age in Hollywood..
Winston- this is not age, it is work done that has made her unrecognizable.
I thought that was Sarah Jessica Parker at first.
Although I hearted Paulson in 'Down with Love,' it wasn't until the third season of 'AHS' that I realized she was the same actress. She is clearly poised to break out in a big way, but someone needs to write her the right role. She makes me think so much of Sigourney Weaver -- talented in ways Hollywood doesn't seem interested in exploring. Ryan Murphy is her James Cameron, but he's no James Cameron.
If you're not aging gracefully, I'd generally say you should still allow yourself to age. If this were a sign of getting handed a lead role again, I'd buy it, but if she's attempting to enter a "character actress" stage of her career, who told her that plastic surgery would help that goal as opposed to undermining it?
Oh yeah, we were supposed to talk about Renée. She looks more Robin Wright than SJP to me. I hope whatever she is doing these days brings her some kind of peace. She seemed crazed to make the most of the fame she experienced in the early aughts. Oh, the aughts.
I feel sorry for her. Said anonymous internet person. Plastic surgery is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.
Why Robin Wright wants to be named Renee Zellweger? but it seems that the squinted eyes devil is gone
Yeah, I'm trying not to read reactions and luckily have avoided seeing any nastiness on my social media feed. She's a good actress (Down with Love yaaaassssssss) has fallen into the trap that people who on one hand celebrated her good work also decided it was okay to snark on her looks.
magicub- Just stop.
Volvagia- Also part of the problem.
I just don't understand -and I never will- how an actress with her comic timing does that to her face.
It's just... her face! I can't get over that face. It's truly a crime. The squinty face is what we secretly loved about her the most! I wouldn't be surprised if the work she's had done affects her career in a negative way. But what's more unfortunate is the environment that women have to deal with in Hollywood. People make fun of you for looking one way, you try to fix it, and then they continue to make fun of you and are even harder on you for not "aging gracefully."
I hope one day there will be a Lynchian/Cronenbergian Hollywood satire that will drive all these points home and change everything forever.
It does sort of remind me of Faye Dunaway. The hooded eyes were part of the allure and in one snip (well two) they were gone.
Still, Renee has the distinctive voice and comic skills. I hope she gets her career back on track.
I really don't care about the surgery, but I just hope she doesn't deny it. That's the kind of thing I don't like since that really impacts people who really can't age in whatever way they want. If she says that she wanted to see better and/or look better, then I'm proud of her. Like Cher and others who say "why not?"
I mean, I don't think she looks bad. It just doesn't look like her anymore.
What's really killing me is that she looks like someone else, but I can't place it. It's not Robin Wright Penn or SJP. Any other ideas?
Evan, in this photo I'd say Kristin Wiig.
She looks like a crazy mix of Robin Wright, Naomi Watts, Juliette Binoche, Juliette Lewis and Julia Ormond. I can spot similarities with each one of these.
Someone wrote an amazing article on Slate (?) about this and ageism in Hollywood and I have to say I kind of agree. It's like when people compared Nicole Kidman in Grace of Monaco to Grace Kelly at 25. Well people she didn't always look like she was 25. Here is the same. Renée can't look like she was 27 or 30. She's aged. And she didn't deal very gracefully with it - but Hollywood sucks. When actresses reach their peak at a young age, we don't want them to age. They need to look 30 forever. How many women of her age are employed on a regular basis? And how many of them didn't touch their face? Bullock did it. Paltrow did it. Ryan did it. Bening did it. Aniston did it. Most of them do.
It's sad.
Nick, I can see Wiig in the hair, and Jay, I considered Watts for a second. However, I think I'm thinking of an older actress (I'm sure that's what everyone wants to hear after they get surgery).
Anyway, I hope she can make a bit of a comeback. It'd be nice to see her try and push herself.
Sarah Paulson and Jennifer Grey?
Oh course this surgery is going to hurt her career. She doesn't look like Renee? Not even a refreshed Renee. She looks like a completely different person. She had one of the most distinct faces in the business and now it's gone.
I don't understand women who make mistakes with surgery when there are examples of how to do it right. Candace Bergen. Raquel Welch.
Or the alternative, let yourself age. Lange.......
(Go back to the US remake of Cracker to see early Paulson (with a very young Josh Hartnet)...all that promise that is now paying off was on display.)
Hollywood puts *immense* pressure on women to stay as young and beautiful as long as possible so it's not a surprise she caved in and got something done. Probably thought it would help her to get roles since she's fallen off the map in the past few years.
BUT the problem is when you're a star, one of the most valuable assets is your face so doing something like this that brings you to the point of looking unrecognisable can only hurt your career even further. Either because something like Botox limits the range of acting you can do or something like Renee did which makes the change way too distracting.
Compare this to guys who can easily afford to get older and not lose sex appeal or roles.
Btw, I love Down with Love and I have no clue why Sarah Paulson doesn't look like the Sarah Paulson of today in that movie.
Recently Joan Allen unfortunately changed her face too.
Ha, I thought the exact same thing. Sarah Jessica Parker with a huge head.
And yes, that's Jessica Lange. This is her gesture with the hand. She's doing it all the time. Shyness?
Hopefully, this will blow over soon. I find Renee's most distinctive and appealing trait to be her voice. As long as she retains that, she'll still have plenty of fans.
If I remember correctly, Jessica Lange, who in the few articles that I have read today is being praised for aging gracefully, also went through a similar experience for getting some sort of plastic surgery in the 1990s or early 2000s. Thankfully, twitter or other instamedia were absent in those days.
"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" So now you know!
I hope this face is a lesson to all the Jennifer's,Shaileenes,Emmas etc
Thank god for that Warren Beatty photo bomb for ultimate cuteness! #PhotoRedemption
dela -- yeah. it's very strange to see new fans of JLange hold her up as an example because she has a LOT of work done. It also kind of killed her career for awhile. but she seems to have let it rest now and just ages.
I've always liked Renee, she reminded me of a young Shirley MacLaine: squinty, quizzical, wry, adorable and funny.
I would have never guessed in a million years that was Zellweger photographed at the Elle event.
I have nothing against plastic surgery. In theory, it's suppose to erase age, not identity.
Wow, just saw video footage of that event, I can certified you that she was squinting as well. She looked just like her past self but more relaxed.