Renée Zellweger: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About the ‘Judy’ Star

Her tiny hometown of Katy, Texas, didn’t have a theater, and her parents — a Swiss engineer and a Norwegian nurse — only took her to the movies once, to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “I never imagined I’d find myself in Hollywood,” she says.

To play a sexually manipulative venture capitalist in Netflix’s provocative new drama series, Renée watched flicks like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. “She was a treat,” says Renée of her femme fatale role. “Every day, she says that thing that you wish you could say, but you wouldn’t dare.”

“Growing up, she was always an iconic figure in my house, so it was a no-brainer for me to want to tell her story,” says Renée, who stars in the biopic Judy — out September 27. Although Liza Minnelli has not formally approved the project, Renée has met her. After seeing Liza perform in Las Vegas, “we chatted backstage afterwards, and it was one of those moments when you start watching yourself melt into a puddle shamelessly,” she recalls.

She threw a dance party for herself in L.A. and cut a rug with one of her father’s old World War II buddies. “I imported friends and family and shared time together in a house full of people I love,” she says.

“You only really come into your own a bit further along in your life,” Renée says. “I think women are exquisite after a particular age.”

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