After her breakthrough role as a sweet young thing
in “Jerry Maguire,” Renee Zellweger knew she wanted to stretch her acting muscle.
So the Texas Protestant could not pass up the priceless opportunity to play a
New York Hasidic Jew in “A Price Above Rubies.”
“Every character you play isn’t you,” she said. “Theoretically it isn’t you, so it’s not much more of a stretch to play somebody who’s homosexual or who is of a different ethnic origin than you are. Each character that you play, you know. I’m not a surgeon, but I wouldn’t mind playing one someday.”
Zellweger, 28, maintains a fresh-faced innocence in a gray mock
turtleneck over a black skirt. With a demure smile and soft-spoken drawl, she
confesses she avoids taking limos at all costs, preferring to keep a low profile.
Hanging out with her dog, Woodrow, and her boyfriend, “Deceiver” director Josh
Pate, remain her favorite pastimes – although not necessarily in that order.
Before “Jerry Maguire,” Zellweger‘s roles in independent art films
garnered praise from the Hollywood community. “A Price Above Rubies” director
Boaz Yakin saw her performance in “The Whole Wide World,” and immediately cast
her in his film. Despite the controversial subject matter of “A Price Above Rubies,”
Zellweger said the film presents a balanced view of the Hasidic community.
“Most American people don’t know about the Hasidic community, and in that respect I think that the film will do good, will do a good service to the Hasidim because I think that Boaz tells a fair story,” she said. “I don’t think that he is attacking Hasidim, I don’t think he’s saying that this is wrong, this is what you shouldn’t do to women, that’s my perspective anyway. I think he celebrates the beauty of the culture. He shows the humor in the people, and he shows the purity in their lifestyle.”Director Yakin spent several years studying at yeshiva, a Jewish religious school, before embarking on a film career in the secular world. Zellweger said Yakin explained aspects of the script, like a brief lesbian kiss with her sister-in-law Juliana Margulies, in the context of the culture.
“He had to explain to me, ‘You know, Renee, this is a woman who has not had your experience since the third grade with boys,'” she said. “She didn’t go to an integrated school, she didn’t live in a society that’s integrated in that way. She’s not been exposed to anything sexual except for in marriage and for different purposes. I had to remember that she thinks differently than I do, and that she communicates differently than I do, and that she is far more naive than me.”
Sonia’s naivete leads her into trouble when she questions the patriarchal order of her life. Her husband objects when she takes a part-time position as a jewelry appraiser after the birth of their son. With her new-found independence, she begins to question her loveless marriage and strictly controlled life. Zellweger said she inhabited the character’s pain after acting it out on the set.
“When you live in such a dark place, just out of habit, it comes with you, and you become sad,” she said. “It was very dark, when I think back of it, I think about it being a very dark experience. My house was dark, the set was dark, my clothes were dark, my attitude was dark. Everything was very, very sad about it.”
After she finished filming “A Price Above Rubies,” Zellweger vacationed in Hawaii to sun herself out of her blue funk. For her next role as Ellen in “One True Thing,” based on a novel by Anna Quindlen, she plays the ambitious daughter of Meryl Streep. Zellweger returns home to nurse her ailing mother, leaving behind her fast-paced career as a journalist in New York City. “One True Thing” opens in September 1998 from Universal Pictures.
