Renée Zellweger says she snuck into UCLA to study ‘some public policy’

‘[I am] just really interested... in politics,’ actor said

Renée Zellweger has revealed that she once snuck into the University of California, Los Angeles “for a little while and did some public policy”.

During an appearance on the Today show on Monday (7 March), the 52-year-old actor recalled the time she was taking a break from acting, and the day she snuck into UCLA’s campus to study international law.

“[I] went to school,” Zellweger said. “I snuck into UCLA for a little while and did some public policy.”

“[I am] just really interested... in politics. It’s one of my favourite things,” she added. “I’ll bore you to death at a dinner party. I really will.”

“I needed to step away and kinda grow as a person, learn [some things] that were not related to work,” the Bridget Jones’s Diary actor recalled. “I mean that’s one of my favourite things about the work. You have the opportunity to learn things that you wouldn’t otherwise have occasion to explore.”

Zellweger’s new project The Thing About Pam is set to premiere today (8 March).

(Getty Images)

The NBC crime series follows the true story of Betsy Faria’s murder and how her best friend, Pam Hupp, played by Zellweger, is suspected to have been behind it all.

The actor was criticised last year after pictures emerged from the set of the forthcoming show, showing Zellweger wearing a “fat suit” and prosthetics for the role of killer Pam Hupp.

Critics on social media condemned the decision to use a padded suit, and one commentator told Metro at the time: “For Zellweger to masquerade as a plus-size person is damaging, fatphobic and potentially triggering to other plus-size people.

Speaking about the costume in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Zellweger has now said: “Oh, gosh, if you don’t recognise an actor or an actress in a performance, that’s a great compliment. You’re not trying to tell your own story.”

Calling the costume “really hot” to wear, she added: “It was pretty much head to toe. It was prosthetics, it was a [padded] suit, it was the choice of clothing, it was the briskness in her step-step-step, her gait.

“All of those things were really important because all those bits and pieces are what construct the person that we project our own conclusions and presumptions onto.”