BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON

RENEE ZELLWEGER (Bridget Jones) won this year's Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress in the role of the rough-hewn Ruby in Anthony Minghella's Civil War epic Cold Mountain. In 2003, her outstanding portrayal of Roxie Hart in the smash hit musical Chicago garnered her widespread critical acclaim and an Oscar® nomination for Best Actress. In addition, she won the 2003 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Lead Role as well as a 2003 Golden Globe Award for Lead Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Zellweger was also nominated for a BAFTA Award for Lead Actress.

Zellweger recently lent her voice to the DreamWorks animated comedy Shark Tale, joining an all-star cast including Jack Black, James Gandolfini, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese and Will Smith. Her forthcoming films include Cinderella Man, opposite Russell Crowe for Oscar®-winning director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer.

The role of Bridget Jones began for Zellweger with 2001's runaway hit Bridget Jones's Diary, for which Renée was nominated for a 2002 Academy Award® for Best Actress, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actor's Guild Award, among many others. Her recent films also include Down With Love, a satirical homage to the 1960s sex comedies that starred Rock Hudson and Doris Day, alongside Ewan McGregor.

Considering that she took her first acting class to ensure graduating from the University of Texas with a literature degree, Zellweger's rise to leading lady status has been rapid and continually met with praise. After appearing in such television projects as the USA Network telefilm A Taste for Killing and the Showtime Drive-In Classics series Shake, Rattle and Rock, she made her film debut while still in Austin in Richard Linklater's coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused. This was followed by Ben Stiller's Reality Bites, Love and a .45 (for which she received her first Independent Spirit Award nomination), 8 Seconds, The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Empire Records and My Boyfriend's Back.

Her other film credits include 20th Century Fox's comedy Me, Myself, and Irene, directed by the Farrelly brothers starring opposite Jim Carrey; The Bachelor, a romantic comedy in which she stars opposite Chris O'Donnell; and director Neil LaBute's dark comedy Nurse Betty, with Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman, for which she won a 2000 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. Renée also starred in

Universal's critically acclaimed One True Thing, with William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and opposite Robin Wright-Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander.

She received acclaim for her vulnerable performance opposite Tom Cruise in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire, which also earned her Best Breakthrough Performer of 1996 by the National Board of Review, a Blockbuster Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy and a SAG Award nomination.