Facegate: the day Renée Zellweger owned the web

It is the story that stopped the week: Ms Zellweger showed off a new look at a premiere and the world was instantly obsessed. Maxine Frith analyses the day Renee owned the web
Renee’s revamps: from left to right, at The Oscars in LA in 2008; at the CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute awards in 2010; in New York in September this year; at the Elle awards in LA this week (Picture: Rex/Corbis)
Rex/ Corbis
Maxine Frith24 October 2014

It was the biggest clickbait story of the week. Yes, Renee Zellweger’s face. Who knew? The 45-year-old actress hasn’t made a film for four years and before Tuesday was not so much off the Hollywood radar as positively missing in action. Then she turned up at a benefit gala in LA looking a bit, well, different, and as The Daily Beast website reported, “worldwide panic” ensued. According to The Beast website, Renee’s visage attracted “more medical scrutiny than Ebola”.

The story, and accompanying pictures, past and present, soared to the top of most-read and shared charts for newspapers and websites of all persuasions, as well as becoming the top-trending subject on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Within seven hours the story had spawned more than 100,000 tweets and 70,000 internet stories.

“What has Renee done to her face?” demanded a delighted Daily Mail in a story that has been shared more than 60,000 times and generated millions of hits. The Guardian’s main article on Zellweger remained the most-viewed piece on its website for more than 24 hours and one opinion piece attracted more than 1,500 comments.

Is a facelift a feminist issue or simply a fascinating insight into our modern media age? Experts queued up to give their opinion. Zellweger immediately denied having work, saying it was the result of living a “happier and healthier” lifestyle.

The jury may be out on whether a surgeon also had a hand in the changes but the verdict is in on Zellweger herself — she’s trending.

FACE FACTS

The photos that emerged of Zellweger at the Elle Women in Hollywood benefit had everything. She looked glamorous enough for a front page but different enough to prompt a news story. Inextricably linked with her role as Bridget Jones, her weight and looks have long been subjected to scrutiny while she has maintained the affection of millions of women who see her as “one of them” despite her wealth and fame.

Lucie Cave, editor-in-chief of Heat magazine, says: “Renee’s face has been a subject of fascination for our readers many times over the years but it’s usually been more about how much weight she’s lost since her days as Bridget Jones. But occasionally a set of pictures lands on our picture desk that we keep coming back to all day because we just can’t believe it’s the same person. Everything about Renee’s new face looks different — it’s like she’s got a brand new head!

“She’s come out saying she’s just got older and started eating more healthily, which may have something to do with it, but it’s like when Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing emerged looking like she’d swallowed Barbie. It’s like she’s erased the Renee we loved completely.”

Heat was going to press on Wednesday with huge coverage of the story.

Some picture editors, however, feel the camera may not be telling the whole truth. One at a rival magazine to Heat, who did not wish to be named for fear her views would not chime with those of her editor’s, said: “If you look at those pictures there really isn’t a huge amount of difference with how she looked, say, a year ago. There’s always been speculation that she’s had work done; she’s had puffed up ‘pillow face’ cheeks for a while.

“Everyone’s gone mad because she hasn’t been seen and her hair and make-up have made her look different.”

IS IT A FEMINIST ISSUE?

Some focused on whether the fascination with Zellweger is a reflection of Hollywood sexism and ageism.

Columnist Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy, writing in The Guardian, called it “face shaming” and said Zellweger’s looks were being “commodified” by a “Greek chorus of opinion”. That commodification was laid bare in the Daily Mirror, which printed a picture of the actress with big red arrows pointing to parts of her that experts believed had been worked on under the headline: “Where did Renee Zellweger’s face go?”

Emily Shire of The Daily Beast believes it’s also about the collision between who we think Zellweger is and the character she is best-known for. She says: “To a certain degree, there is an irrational sense of betrayal. We loved her as Bridget Jones for owning her weight, finding love and never settling for less than she deserved. Her weight loss after the movies implied you couldn’t actually look like Bridget Jones and achieve all that she did. Now that she has once again altered her appearance in dramatic fashion — evidently through plastic surgery — the obsessive scrutiny has returned.

“Ironically, lost in the over-analysis of Zellweger’s new look is the most important message of Bridget Jones’s Diary: we like you, Renee, just as you are.”

However Dr John Jewell, director of studies at Cardiff University’s school of journalism, is sceptical about the timing of the pictures and the public’s response to them. He says: “It is about our celebrity culture and obsession with how people look but I think to some extent stories like this provide a welcome relief to austerity, Islamic State and Ebola.

“There is a public appetite for pictures like this — they generate hits and that’s what newspapers and websites want. But I think young people in particular are very aware about stories like this — they know it’s clickbait and that it’s probably PR-driven.”

Dr Jewell points out that it may be no coincidence that Zellweger’s face has re-emerged just as there is renewed speculation over the possibility of a third Bridget Jones movie.

In Hollywood, where media presence is everything, the actress is once again hot property. Perhaps it’s all just part of her cunning plan.

COSMETIC ENHANCEMENT

Renee and the media may not be the only winners out of Facegate. Despite the “WTF?!” comments on her possibly worked-on features, cosmetic surgery experts say the publicity will benefit them too.

The Harley Medical Group of clinics across the UK has already seen a spike in enquiries to its call centre since Tuesday.Bernadette Harte, non-surgical training manager at the group, says: “I turned up at the Brighton clinic yesterday and everyone was talking about it.

“Often patients turn up with pictures of people they want to look like. Angelina Jolie is one of the most popular. But Renee is about the same age as a lot of our patients. They’re in their forties, maybe their kids have grown up or they are single again, they have a bit of money and they want to look good. I think the fact that people can’t say for sure whether she has had work done or not shows how good surgery can be now. “That’s what our patients want: for people to see they look different but to not be sure why that is.” (Harte suspects a few “fillers” may account for the changes to Zellweger’s face.)

WILL IT REBRAND OR REBOUND?

Is all publicity good publicity? Her profile (in more ways than one) may be hitting the headlines at the moment but will Zellweger benefit, even from the unkind judgments about her?

London-based brand psychologist Jonathan Gabay believes she is playing a high-stakes strategy.

“If she really hasn’t had work done then she will be OK because I think there is a lot of sympathy, particularly among women, for her and the whole thing about ageing and how you’re perceived,” he says.

“The problem is that if she has had work done, it’s almost inevitable that the facts will emerge and people will feel cheated about the fact she has denied it.

“But then I think she can still win out because she can say, ‘This is what I had to do to get on, to stay in Hollywood and get the roles.’ She can even play on the whole Bridget Jones thing and say this is what I succumbed to, I have the same insecurities as you.”

Whatever the truth, as the internet hits accumulate, the tweets continue, pub conversations rage and those photos are shared, Zellweger has proved that she is right back on Hollywood’s radar. V, V good, as Bridget Jones would say.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in