Renée Zellweger Was “Sick of the Sound” of Her Own Voice

From 2010 to 2016, Renée Zellweger took a step back from Hollywood—and while a desire for normalcy played a part in her years-long break, it also had to do with the simple fact that she could no longer stand to hear the sound of her own voice.

In a new interview with British Vogue conducted by her Bridget Jones co-star Hugh Grant, the actress got candid about her hiatus from acting, revealing that it was something she absolutely “needed” to do. “I was sick of the sound of my own voice,” she said. “When I was working, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, listen to you. Are you sad again, Renée? Oh, is this your mad voice?’ It was a regurgitation of the same emotional experiences.”

As for what she did during her time off, Zellweger kept busy. Not only did she write music and study international law, but she also “built a house, rescued a pair of older doggies, created a partnership that led to a production company, advocated for and fundraised with a sick friend and spent a lot of time with family and godchildren and driving across the country with the dogs.”

“I got healthy,” she said in summary. 

When asked if she would still go into acting if she got to do life all over again, Zellweger was hesitant to say “yes.” “I’m not sure that the way that it works now, celebrity and all of that stuff, I don’t know that that suits me,” she said. “There used to be a line between celebrity and art.” 

“The line has become increasingly ambiguous. And notorious and famous and known are now all the same thing,” the double Oscar-winner noted. “It used to be that you were known because you had done something that was worth knowing about.”