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Renee Zellweger: ‘Why Are We Talking About How Women Look?’

Renee Zellweger
Renee Zellweger attends the 2014 ELLE Women In Hollywood Award.Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Older and wiser. Renée Zellweger touched on aging in Hollywood and slammed people who focus on her appearance during a recent interview.

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“I’ve never seen the maturation of a woman as a negative thing,” the 47-year-old Oscar winner told The Hollywood Reporter of growing older in the spotlight. “I've never seen a woman stepping into her more powerful self as a negative.”

The Bridget Jones’s Baby star expressed her frustration with the scrutiny of her appearance and questions about whether she has had work done. “But this conversation perpetuates the problem. Why are we talking about how women look? Why do we value beauty over contribution?” she mused. “We don’t seem to value beauty over contribution for men. It’s simply not a conversation.”

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Zellweger, who took a nearly six-year break from making movies before returning for the third installment of the Bridget Jones series, opened up about that sabbatical. “I wanted to grow,” she said. “If you don't explore other things, you wake up 20 years later and you're still that same person who only learns anything when she goes out to research a character. You need to grow!"

Her main focus during her hiatus was writing, “because it makes me happy,” and it seems Bridget Jones was the perfect character to get her back to acting. “I love this character,” Zellweger gushed of the lovable lady first created by novelist Helen Fielding in 1996. "Bridget makes imperfection all right."

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The Jerry Maguire actress doesn’t focus on flaws, however, and has a new mantra of positive thoughts only. "My main goal is to avoid any negativity that might enter my consciousness,” she said. “If I'm not aware of it, then it's not real. It doesn't exist.”

The ultraprivate star also wasn’t too keen on spilling details about her love life with boyfriend of four years Doyle Bramhall, who she met while attending the University of Texas in the early '90s. “We have shared history, the same mutual friends from eons ago, before either of us was doing anything public,” she said of the pair reconnecting in 2012.

Bridget Jones’s Baby hits theaters on September 16. 

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