Renee Zellweger wore Ulyana Sergeenko to the wildly popular TIFF premiere of ‘Judy’

Judy red carpet premiere at TIFF 2019

Here are some photos of Renee Zellweger at the TIFF premiere of Judy, the movie about the last year of Judy Garland’s life. For the premiere, Renee wore this buttony Ulyana Sergeenko dress which… I mean, the Duchess of Cambridge would love this, right? It feels very Kate. It feels very Renee too. Not my vibe, but whatever.

Anyway, I’ve been waiting to see what the critical reaction to Judy would be, because I was judging it harshly from the photos and the first trailer. The photos of Renee in Judy-drag are horrendous, and the trailer seemed… awful, to me at least. But apparently critics at TIFF love the movie and they’re trying to make “Renee has Oscar buzz for playing Judy Garland” into a thing. Really?? Really:

Critics seem to be uniformly raving about Renee’s performance in particular, especially since she carries the film and it’s all about JUDY of course. Whatever. If she wins an Oscar for this, I’ll eat my hat. She could manage to get an Oscar nomination though, depending on what the Best Actress field looks like in late December.

Meanwhile, Renee recently told a story about how she overheard a man talking about her plastic surgery around 2014:

On particularly “painful” moment came when she was on the London subway and a man sitting next to her started talking to the two women he was with. “They were talking about Hollywood and how Hollywood ladies are so silly, especially that Renée Zellweger,” Zellweger, now 50, told SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle during a Town Hall session. “How could she do that? Why would she go and have surgery on her face like we wouldn’t know? She doesn’t look like herself, and you can’t just do that where you go and don’t look like yourself, ‘cause we expect you to look like yourself,” Zellweger recalled the man saying.

“And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s interesting. Anyway, here’s my stop,’ ” Zellweger continued. “So I get up and I stand next to the door waiting for it to open and the man is still talking about how stupid I am. And he looked up and he said, ‘Oh God, you’re not — you are! Oh my God, but you look just like yourself!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s funny how that works, isn’t it?’ “

Zellweger said the moment stung, but she was able to move past it without letting it affect her daily life. “It’s only momentarily where you go, ‘Jeez, wow, that’s pretty painful.’ But I don’t live in that,” she continued. “It just visits my life here and there and I’m not really privy on that stuff until someone sends it to me. I don’t seek it out.”

[From People]

I don’t really understand the purpose of that story? Like, Renee truly looked radically different and I will forever believe that she went under the knife to achieve that look. But it feels like Renee wants us to 100% believe her vaguely worded denials about the obvious surgery, and not only that, we should feel sympathy for her because she overheard someone making a valid point about plastic surgery? It’s strange.

Judy red carpet premiere at TIFF 2019

Photos courtesy of WENN.

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38 Responses to “Renee Zellweger wore Ulyana Sergeenko to the wildly popular TIFF premiere of ‘Judy’”

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  1. VintageS says:

    I wouldn’t be surprised if she was nominated as she’s been nominated consistently over the years.

    • Mia4s says:

      It would nice for her no doubt. She has had a quiet spell and she owes her Oscar win to Weinstein and his campaigning (She does. Cold Mountain was terrible. I’m sorry, but she does). So it would be nice to move away from that.

      And bull**it on that story. I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. It sounds like a PR tale to help deal with the (valid) questions.

      • Lady Baden-Baden says:

        I think that’s a bit unfair to Zellweger. Cold Mountain was so-so, but she was fantastic in it. I think she deserved the kudos, despite that monster’s campaigning.

        Anyway – Zellweger has her Oscar. I’m waiting for more on the buzz out of TIFF around J-Lo deserving a supporting actress nomination for Hustlers! How amazing?!

      • Esmom says:

        My BS radar immediately pinged at that story, too.

        I honestly never thought she looked that different.

      • Becks1 says:

        Zellweger is one of those actresses that I don’t think is that good because I’m always like, “she’s not acting, she’s just being herself.” but that’s how good she is – she has me convinced she is always just being herself, and when you look at how different her roles are (Bridget Jones vs Roxie Hart, for example), you realize she’s very talented.

    • minx says:

      I’m glad to see her back in the spotlight.

      • Kosmos says:

        I’ve always liked her in all her films–it would be great to see her recognized again. She’s always seemed like a nice person and who cares about her plastic surgery–look at all the other actresses who’ve done it as well.

      • maisie says:

        Zellweger is not a nice person, which is the reason she was absent for so long. Friends who worked on Down With Love and Cold Mountain said she was very neurotic and demanding, and not a little racist. And that Oscar was bought for her by Weinstein (just as he bought Paltrow’s) which is more than a little fishy (ugh).

        Oh – and her facelift is the worst and most obvious since those of Meg Ryan, Courteney Cox, Madonna, and Nicole Kidman. No one is *ever* fooled.

  2. Lady Baden-Baden says:

    I saw the play this is based on in Edinburgh years ago and it was really, really good (as was the actress playing Judy). I could totally see awards for the part if they’ve done a decent enough job transferring it.

  3. Aims says:

    I don’t understand why it’s offensive when people have a genuine reaction when someone gets plastic surgery. If you look different, then there’s gonna be talk. It doesn’t have to be rude, but if someone in my life were to get a face lift, or anything else. My reaction would be,” they look different.” It’s not a negative and it’s your body, do what you want.

    • (TheOG)@Jan90067 says:

      I think she just had eyelid surgery as the folds of skin over her eyes was very droopy at one point, and probably was interfering with her sight (my mom’s friend had to have that done when she was in her mid 50s due to this).

      As we were not used to seeing her as anything but “squinty”, it looked *radically* different to us. Her eyes have seemed to “settle” now for quite some time. She looks the same to me at this point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • SM says:

        This is what I don’t get. How come if that was a surgery and by the looks of it at the time she did look like she got a major work on her eyes, bow she looks like her previous self? Did she have it reversed, or something?
        As for ppl getting offended, I also agree. Especially with actors. Their faces are their work device and it is only natural that when you get a makeover people will notice. I remember that Annabelle Wallis came back in the second season of Peaky Blinders looking radically different because she got a nose job during the hiatus. It was difficult to focus on what was happening onscreen when she came on because she looked radically different.

  4. Erinn says:

    She had said this in the last few days as well:
    “(T)he implication that I somehow needed to change what was going on because it wasn’t working – that makes me sad”

    Which certainly isn’t a denial of any kind. It seems more that she was upset that people thought she HAD to get surgery to keep working rather than the choice to do it for herself.

    If she TRULY didn’t go under the knife, she either got fillers or some kind of injectable or she had some sort of strange reaction to medication (like in the way you can get moonface from steroids). But there’s no way she just looked THAT differently without some kind of third party intervention.

    I am glad that she’s looking like old Renee again. I always thought she was incredibly incredibly cute, and growing up in the 90s, I always appreciated that she didn’t just look like everyone else. She had her own look – she was recognizable, and in a similar way to how most people just love Sandra Bullock, Renee was kind of adored for being this sweet, quirky woman.

  5. Tw says:

    That subway story sounds made up.

    • smcollins says:

      That was my gut reaction, too. I mean what are the odds?? But then I guess anything is possible.
      As far as the film, I think it looks pretty good although also pretty depressing. This seems to be Renee’s big return so I wouldn’t be surprised if she snagged an Oscar nom for it.

    • Tanguerita says:

      abso-fucking-lutely. ‘Oh God, you’re not — you are! Oh my God, but you look just like yourself!’ Sure, Jan.

    • Jen says:

      Yeah, my bs radar was ringing loud and clear.

      • Esmom says:

        Ha, I said almost exactly the same thing above, didn’t scroll down to see this first. I’m bummed that she feels she needs to tell this tall tale.

    • mellie says:

      I was scrolling down to type the same thing…fake

  6. Lucy2 says:

    Are you really surprised there’s Oscar talk? The whole thing just screams Oscar bait to me.

    At the time, she really did look different, and I thought she had gotten her eyelids done, which would’ve been totally understandable and more of a medical procedure than plastic surgery for vanity sake. But now she looks like herself again… I don’t understand!

  7. Loretta says:

    Renee is getting absoulte raves, I’m so happy for her!

  8. Becks1 says:

    I’m with the others who think the subway story sounds made up.

    She definitely had something done years ago – my guess is not plastic surgery so much as botox or fillers and now they have worn off, she looks more like herself? She definitely looked really different, what, 5 years ago?

    I don’t know if I’ll see this movie; I’m sure she’s good in it because I think she is a good actress, and the Academy does love movies about Hollywood legends, so it will be interesting to see how it goes during awards season.

    • Originaltessa says:

      I think it was a few years ago, not 5, probably before starting this movie in an attempt to open up her eyes to look more like Judy. It was likely Botox that just dissipated. She’s herself again.

      • Kate says:

        Yeah, if she had anything it must not have been permanent because she looks the same now as she always has.

      • Kendra says:

        I think she does look still different form what she used to. It is not as much but I do not think it was just Botox.

  9. serena says:

    Of course people are still talking about it, it was very very obvious she did something drastic to her face -no matter how much she denies it. She’s just feeling the burn, still, that’s what I think.

  10. Lala11_7 says:

    For a big screen star…Renee is the only actress I could think of that could give Judy’s harrowing end of life story the gravitas and emotional and psychological weight that it needs to move beyond bland cosplay….Which is unfortunately, what we end up getting a lot of times with biopics (see last year and this year’s big box office entries)

  11. JanetFerber says:

    She looks like herself again. Yes.

  12. Anon33 says:

    Maybe I’m seeing something different, but she definitely does NOT look “just like her old self again” in the pics above. Yes her eyes are squinty again, but I can clearly see cheek implants and significant around the mouth Botox. Her face is super shiny. Dead giveaway.

  13. Renee says:

    The subway story is a lie…..imo.

  14. Dorothy says:

    Family doesn’t like it won’t be seeing it

  15. Dee Kay says:

    I’m iffy on this. Loved Zellwegger in Jerry Maguire and Chicago, and if there was a bright spot in Cold Mountain, she was it for sure. But as Judy Garland?????!!! Color me dubious. I recently saw Garland’s Star Is Born and my goodness, she blew me away, she was just a one-of-a-kind.

  16. Lena says:

    I think a straw one might be easier to go down than any other kind! As for plastic surgery, it was her eyes that looked different, much like simple surgery my brother in law got because his natural eyelid drop affected his vision as he got older. Or maybe it was prep to look more like Judy. Either way who cares she looks like our squinty eyed Reneé again!

  17. Mabs A'Mabbin says:

    Pics or it didn’t happen. 😉

    She does look public-ready now…she looks good. But the girl had werk-n-twerk.