It’s that time of again, when we all (or most of us) read articles like this and then think of our bank accounts and cry ourselves to sleep, because Forbes have just released Hollywood’s Top-Earning Actresses.
Brad Pitt must do something good to women because Angelina Jolie tops the list while his ex wife Jennifer Aniston is right behind her.
Most of Angelina’s money came from the $341 million that her movie Wanted made, plus she got a chunk of money from her next movie, Salt.
As for Jennifer’s money, her film Marley & Me made abotu $244 million, she gets money from being the spokesperson for SmartWater, she got money for her next film The Baster and of course she still rakes in cash from Friends residuals.
The top 15 list looks like this:
1: Angelina Jolie - $27 million
2: Jennifer Aniston - $25 million
3: Meryl Streep - $24 million
4: Sarah Jessica Parker - $23 million
5: Cameron Diaz - $20 million
6: Sandra Bullock - $15 million
6: Reese Witherspoon - $15 million
8: Nicole Kidman - $12 million
8: Drew Barrymore - $12 million
10: Renee Zellweger - $10 million
11: Cate Blanchett - $8 million
12: Anne Hathaway, $7 million
12: Halle Berry, $7 million
14: Scarlett Johansson, $5.5 million
15: Kate Winslet, $2 million
According to Forbes, The Top 10 women earned a combined $183 million compared to $393 million for the Top 10 men. And they said sexism was dead?
Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, and Hugh Laurie really took home the box office gold this weekend with their new cartoon movie, “Monsters Vs. Aliens“. The movie brought in a whopping $58,200,000 in it’s first week on the charts.
Rainn Wilson stars as the voice of Gallaxhar, an alien who lands on Earth and wants to take it over. The military decides to send in the monsters to take him out.
The movie has an all-star cast: Will Arnett as The Missing Link, Kiefer Sutherland as General W.R. Monger, Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy/Ginormica, Hugh Laurie as Dr. Cockroach, Seth Rogen as B.O.B., Paul Rudd as Derek Dietl, Stephen Colbert as President Hathaway, Amy Poehler as the voice of the computer, Renee Zellweger as Katie, and John Krasinski as Cuthbert.
Rounding out the top five box office contenders this weekend were “The Haunting In Connecticut” in the second spot with $23,010,000, “Knowing” in third place with $14,705,000, “I Love You, Man” taking fourth place with $12,600,000, and finally, “Duplicity” bringing in $7,556,000.
Renee Zellweger has recently played down any romance between her and Paul McCartney, but the rumors are flying again. After meeting a week ago in the Hamptons, she and Paul McCartney were spotted on a dinner date.
Then on Thursday night, the pair dined at a quiet table for two at the American Hotel on Main St. in Sag Harbor.
“Renee arrived first, just before 8:30, and was waiting at the table by herself,” a witness said. The Oscar winner and the music legend lingered for two hours over their meal at the Victorian-style hotel. “The dining rooms are extremely dimly lit, mostly with candlelight,” the source said. “It’s an extremely romantic place to meet for diner. They left separately, but they looked like they were enjoying themselves. One lady at a nearby table tried to take a picture with her little camera, and she was ejected from the restaurant,” a source said.
I don’t see this relationship lasting much longer than their previous ones, but I’ll let it be.
Who knew Renee Zellweger and Jenna Jameson were separated at birth? Early in her career, Zellweger reportedly worked at a go go bar, but turned down a topless dancing offer, while Jameson has never turned down anything in her life. But it looks like they both have a love of 500 calorie a day diets and fake boobs. Come on, Renee, no one stays that skinny and still needs a bra.
LIFE: In your new movie, Beatrix Potter best expresses herself through the characters she created, like Peter Rabbit and Flopsy Bunny. How do you best express yourself?
ZELLWEGER: Oh, I don’t know. I’m not a performer. I don’t want to hop up on a stage and go “Look at me! I’m Renée! What do you think?” That’s not me. What I do is very different. If I want to express something, it’s through the filter of a character. So I never feel exposed.
LIFE: You made the movie in a very difficult part of your life last year.
ZELLWEGER: It was important for me to make this film—going to work and being with my friends, getting through the days.
LIFE: What was the hardest part about 2006 for you?
ZELLWEGER: Well, I’m sure that if you buy groceries, you might have read something about it. It’s not on the top of my favorite things that have ever happened. [Her eyes well up] I’m not a superficial person. I don’t care about what’s on the grocery-store shelves. That’s just salt in the wound. But it’s not a television show. I lived it. It’s a very sad experience for anyone to go through, and it’s not fun when people decide that it’s a lovely thing to capitalize on. But you’re oblivious to that because you are living the reality of the experience—which is devastating.
LIFE: Are you two still friends?
ZELLWEGER: I’ll tell you that I was saddened. I’ll tell you that it took . . . it’s, it’s not something I could reason away. It’s something that I’ll live through, but I don’t want to talk about it beyond that because it matters to me.
LIFE: But is there anything that you feel you need to change about your life in the coming year?
ZELLWEGER: Yes. I need to find a way to manage the things that are very difficult for me in terms of fame. I need to find a way to have more grace in certain situations. I’m not good at the majority of things that come with celebrity. I like my job. I don’t mind getting up at three in the morning on the Isle of Man, working in a cowshed that smells like poo. I’m okay with 16-hour days. I’m okay with living out of my suitcase. I am not good at the commodification of me as a person—it’s dehumanizing. I’m not good at it because my values are different than that, and so I’m disappointed by it. But it’s not my place to be disappointed by it. I need to find a way to be okay with those things.
LIFE: Is it a question of trying to distance yourself from it? To care less about what’s written about you?
ZELLWEGER: It’s hard to not care. It takes a long time to realize the only way to win is to resign yourself to losing, because then you lose less. Because you are going to lose. There are going to be people who capitalize on your losses, on your sadness, and they’ll create it. I expect that if I have a personal crisis, somebody is going to sell magazines because of it. I expect that there will be paparazzi in the street. It’s the other side of fame. I’ve seen stories where people speculate about what it is that [you're] saying based on your body language. It’s incredible to me that that’s where our society has gone.
LIFE: You want people to respect you and recognize your films . . .
ZELLWEGER: No, that’s not the goal. It’s rewarding when you do something that somebody cares about—not just in this medium, but in the world. When you look at yourself and say “Can I contribute something?” I look at this and think, Well, what is acting anyway? I question the value of it all the time, of what it is that I “give.”
LIFE: But you entertain millions.
ZELLWEGER: I can’t see it that way. Every time someone comes up to me and says something [nice], it still surprises me that they’ve seen [one of her movies]. To me, these are little projects that I have to believe are private experiences or I couldn’t do them. I couldn’t do them knowing that potentially I’m going to disappoint people. I think about acting as this thing I’m lucky to do because I love it. But if I had looked at it from an outsider’s perspective in the beginning and known “This is what your life will be like on a daily basis, can you handle it?” I might have said “I don’t know.”
LIFE: Knowing what you do now, what would you have done differently?
ZELLWEGER: I’m not sure. When Nurse Betty came out [in 2000] I was deciding “Now is the time. I know what my life will look like after I participate on this level in the public arena. I am old enough, and I am grounded enough . . . I’ll be all right.” And then it changed. The parameters of what was considered fair game broadened. . . . But here’s the flip side: It ain’t 10 kids on welfare. It’s not being unable to afford your housing and having your job taken away from you. It’s not a sick child . . .
LIFE: . . . it’s not all those awful things, so, you say, get over it.
ZELLWEGER: Get over it! But there are still days you’re just a person.
LIFE: Beatrix Potter loved children but didn’t have any of her own. Do you want kids?
ZELLWEGER: I don’t think about it. I don’t believe in prerequisites for happiness. It’s not a mantra, it’s just my composition. I don’t have a list of things I need in order to be happy. I like to take the good that’s in the mix of life and use that to create the happiness today.
LIFE: But what about marriage? Did you always dream of that?
ZELLWEGER: No, no.
LIFE: So your thinking was, If I meet somebody . . .
ZELLWEGER: If the circumstances are right, then sure. It was more about it being the right thing to do.
LIFE: Do you think you will fall in love again?
ZELLWEGER: Maybe.
LIFE: And if you don’t, would you feel that there was something missing, having been in love before?
ZELLWEGER: I don’t know, because I’m different now. I’m different than I was entering into [her relationship with Chesney]. And so, I’m open to something new. . . . I just don’t have any expectations. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a romantic, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t have things that I believe in, because I do.
LIFE: So what do you do to escape?
ZELLWEGER: Road trip. Whenever I can. It’s been a while.
LIFE: Do you still have your truck?
ZELLWEGER: Same truck that I’ve always had . . . an old Chevy. A year and a half ago I drove from New York to Florida to see my parents. I rented a small car because I wanted to drop it off in Florida. I didn’t know where I was going to go.
LIFE: What was the best experience you had on that trip?
ZELLWEGER: A Motel 6 in South Carolina. I wrote a lot that night, and I drove around the little town.
LIFE: Do you keep a diary?
ZELLWEGER: I don’t keep a conventional diary. I’d bore myself. I put my thoughts on my BlackBerry and hope it doesn’t crash.
LIFE: Or hope you don’t lose it.
ZELLWEGER: Oh, I did that! That’s a terrible 10 minutes.
LIFE: You’re about to start filming George Clooney’s Leatherheads, a 1920s romantic comedy. Is it true he sent you the script one night and you committed the next morning?
ZELLWEGER: Oh, I was in before I read the script. I’m a big fan of his directing, and he’s charming. But I’m scared—I’ve heard he’s relentless with the on-set pranks. He plans months in advance, and I’m terrified of what he’s got up his sleeve for me.
LIFE: So the thing you are looking forward to most in 2007 is . . .
ZELLWEGER: Leatherheads. That will be nice.
From her hilarious antics in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” to her showstopping routines in “Chicago” and her Oscar-winning performance in “Cold Mountain,” Renee Zellweger has proven she’s a versatile and talented actress…indeed.
But she begs to differ?
Now, she’s showing moviegoers what she can do behind the camera as well. Zellweger is the producer and star of “Miss Potter,” the new film about Beatrix Potter, creator of the best-selling children’s book of all time, “Peter Rabbit.”
Not only was Potter a well-known author, she was also a pioneering environmentalist and a career woman who defied her parents and fell in love with her publisher. Though Potter and Zellweger are separated by more than a century, they have much in common. Both are famous and admired by the public, and both women share a sense of shyness and humility.
ABC’s Diane Sawyer recently sat down with Zellweger to talk about “Miss Potter” and why she doesn’t feel like the typical movie star.
Diane Sawyer: So Beatrix Potter. Who knew that she was this revolutionary thing? I imagined her as this — sort of big-breasted grandmother.
Renee Zellweger: Yeah. Not me. I didn’t know a thing. I was so surprised to find out that the lady behind the bunnies and the, and the, and you know, the ducks and the mice, was so accomplished in so many different areas. I had absolutely no idea.
Diane Sawyer: So how did you first get turned onto it?
Renee Zellweger: I read the script. I read the script and I was just fascinated. I was fascinated by her life story, which is impossible to believe it’s not fiction. You know, when you finish the script, you’re thinking, okay, it has all of the makings of great storytelling. And then you come to find that this is actually her true life story, and then I was hooked, and then I just wanted to know more.
Diane Sawyer: And also, her love story, my goodness.
Renee Zellweger: I know. Isn’t it extraordinary?
Diane Sawyer: You said recently — you said, I don’t think I look like a movie star. Do you really mean that?]
Renee Zellweger: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. When I think of movie star in the conventional sense, oh, absolutely.
Diane Sawyer: Who looks like a movie star?
Renee Zellweger: Oh, well, there’s lists and lists of, you know, gorgeous girls who fit the bill. I, I don’t know. I look like kind of a little bit of an accident maybe, a little bit unconventional. I mean, but it works for me. I don’t complain. It makes it easier for me, I think.
I mean I didn’t, I didn’t find my way through this business because…people were…celebrating this, this great beauty you know, so I don’t have an obligation to maintain it, which is nice and I’m not limited by it. I don’t want to worry about what I look like or I don’t want what I’m inevitably —
Diane Sawyer: Well, you don’t get up in the morning like we do and go — well, girls, come on, I’m a girl.
Renee Zellweger: Absolutely, I’m a girl. I want to cover my pimples like everybody else. But I don’t want to be beholden to that.
Diane Sawyer: You said your New Year’s resolution is to get control of your personal life? You had a very funny word: it was to do a better job of “managing my personal life.” Is this the New Year’s resolution, and to do a lot of focusing on your cat?
Renee Zellweger: Yeah, there’s just, you know, little things that fall by the wayside that I’d like not to let fall by the wayside, and I’d like to have more grace in certain areas of my professional life. That’s a big one.
Diane Sawyer: Spiritual grace or —
Renee Zellweger: I would like to be more comfortable with the subsequent complications that come from having a public persona. I’m not so good at it. I can fake it, but on the inside, I get a bit, you know, a little bit jostled by it. So I’d like to find a way to be more comfortable with the things that come with it.
“Renee arrived first, just before 8:30, and was waiting at the table by herself,” a witness said. The Oscar winner and the music legend lingered for two hours over their meal at the Victorian-style hotel. “The dining rooms are extremely dimly lit, mostly with candlelight,” the source said. “It’s an extremely romantic place to meet for diner. They left separately, but they looked like they were enjoying themselves. One lady at a nearby table tried to take a picture with her little camera, and she was ejected from the restaurant,” a source said.
