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Renee Zellweger has won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of a struggling Judy Garland in the biopic Judy. Renee won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG and so many other awards for this role and any other win would have been a huge upset. She did her own singing in the film and expertly portrayed Judy’s fragility and pain in the later years of her life. This is Renee’s fourth nomination and second win. (Her first Oscar was for Best Supporting Actress in 2004’s Cold Mountain.) Renee’s acceptance speeches have been a mixed bag this year. She used a weird southern accent at the SAG Awards and was obviously drunk at the Golden Globes. Tonight she was together though.
Renee opened by thanking the Academy and her fellow nominees. She also thanked the director, Destin Daniel Cretton, the cast and crew, and a bunch of other people including her date, her longtime manager John Carrabino. She closed by saying that she’d had a lot of conversations with people about what Judy Garland meant to them. “Our heroes unite us. The best among us who inspire us to find the best in ourselves. When we look to our heroes we agree and that matters.” She name checked a bunch of artists, sports heroes and astronauts and included our service people and first responders. She also thanked Judy Garland and said the Oscar was for her.
Overall it was a thoughtful and well delivered speech, I was impressed.
Congratulations to Renee on her second Oscar! Renee was in Armani and we’ll have full fashion coverage tomorrow bright and early.
🤘So proud of Renee! Hook’em Horns🤘
I thought it was the worst most rambling speech.
So painful to listen to the drivel.
Renee’s was perhaps the longest and most boring acceptance speech in Oscar history.
Why do they keep handing out Oscars to people for imitating dead people? Study old footage and mimic their gestures. Win an Oscar. Big deal. That’s not acting. It’s mimicry.
Really, what about Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln, Judy Dench or Cate Blanchet as Elizabeth I, Ben Kingsley as Ghandi, Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen? There are many excellent films about “dead people” that are worth watching. I personally thought Rene’s portray of Judy was amazing, but I also liked Judy Davis’ portray of Judy Garland as well. You can dislike Rene’s performance as Judy, without condemning an entire portion of film making.
That is gorgeous. She always brings it.
Renee is Texan! Born and raised and went to college there. I had no idea because she probably used a dialect coach over the years to tone it down for roles. But she’s been away from the spotlight for years and probably doesn’t care anymore? My guess is that’s her natural accent?
Though word on the street Liza Minnelli was not down with the portrayal of her mother?
Renee is from Katy, TX, which is virtually a suburb of Houston. That accent was manufactured – no one who lives within commuting distance of Houston sounds like that.
I’ll disagree because as a fellow Texan I’m from San Antonio, I have no accent but people from Boerne (10 minutes from my home) or Séguin or any of the outside towns do have accents. It’s weird, but it happens. Katy didn’t become a big suburb until 2000’s. By then Renee was gone.
I will say it is however weird that she sounds more McConaughey because people from Dallas don’t sound like people from Houston and people from both don’t sound like people from Austin. That being said, maybe that’s the Hollywood version of a Texan accent. It gets weird. I have no accent, ever but if I hear people from Texas with strong accents talk, I will talk like that until an hour after. Accents are weird and subjective
Fellow Houstonian here, no one from Katy sounds like Renee. It’s put on. No idea where she learned it as she loves to remind us that her parents were immigrants. She sounds like a third generation Beaumont native or something. It’s ridiculous.
Also, Matthew McConaughey is from Uvalde and lived there until he was 11, well after your accent develops. He’s a perfect example of an exaggerated fake Southern accent.
I didnt think it was rambling at all. I thought Joaquin’s was, though.
She was just rambling a bunch of names. It was horrible and awkward.
Didn’t see the other speeches so maybe this was impressive by comparison.
It’s like she had a cohesive speech and point and it just got scrambled in her head and spit out. “Our heroes unite us” turned into a four minute long ramble and list of names.
One correction: Destin Daniel Cretton did not direct Judy. Had he, it would have been a much better film. He directed Just Mercy which has nothing to do with Renee or Judy Garland. 🙂
I could not for the life of me follow where she was going with her speech. I think when reading it here, it makes sense. But it was so incoherent IMO. Especially back to back with Joaquin’s mad rambles.
Yeah, that speech was a choice. Next time she should have something prepared, it’s not like she hasn’t been cleaning up this awards season, and maybe had an inkling she might win this. Congrats to her, though.
I stopped listening to her speech because I was so distracted by her botox face.
I mean…. she is 50 years old and working in one of the most criticised industries for a woman there is. Regular folk get botox now… of course actresses do too.
Blecch. She imitated old film clips and brought no depth to her performance. I’ll not mention the singing.
A galactic star noticed the fuss about this movie and this actress the other day and phoned up Variety for a cover shoot and interview. Miss Minnelli limited her remarks to an epic bit of shade – “I hope she had fun making it” – and moved on. Then Real Liza talked about Real Legends.
I must have had too much wine over the course of the evening, because when it came to RZ’s acceptance speech I was completely confused about WTF she was saying. It started fine? Then turned into an incoherent word salad. As someone said, she should have used Joaquin’s speechwriter …
Her speech was sooo long, I felt like she was just rambling. I do like her most of the time, but dang. They didn’t even cut her off like they normally do. I should’ve timed it lol.
I wish she would have made her speech (any of them but especially this one) more personal. She’s had quite a go of it the last decade and it would have been cool to hear how she feels about her sudden resurrection of sorts in HW esp given the performance she was winning for.
I’m glad for her. I’ve always liked her. She’s never been good at speeches. She is a good actress. I knew when I saw her dress that she came expecting to win.
Sorry. Bloody awful film; endless chicken jerking neck, twitching. No similarity to JG’s voice whatsoever. Everyone goes on about the fact that RZ sang – so what? Sounded absolutely NOTHING like Judy Garland. My friend and I heckle-mocked the whole way through
Rupert Goold directed Judy. I’m happy for Renee, as I thought she was wonderful as Judy. Her speech at the Spirits was miles ahead of this one. Shorter too!
I haven’t seen the movie but I will always have a soft spot for Renee.