Renée Zellweger, Before and After

Although she started acting in college, Renée was 27 when she landed her breakthrough role in Jerry Maguire—and then suddenly rose to fame. Here she is a few months after its release, with barely any makeup and straight, medium-length hair. We can assume that this is her natural dark blonde hair colour, too.

She was just as fresh-faced—and relatively unstyled, by current standards—the following year, even though her career was quickly taking off. Back then, celebs didn’t have entire hair and makeup teams for every red carpet appearance! 

But even Renée couldn’t escape the 1990s without one embarrassing style moment. For the VMAs, she showed up with smudgy eyeliner and a big mane of partly straight, partly crimped hair. Her facial expression says it all—this look was better left to the era’s pop divas like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears.

The crimped hair was quickly forgotten when she appeared with bangs and a chic blunt bob the next year. This entire look is timeless, actually, right down to the flushed cheeks and stained pink lips. It would be every bit as stylish today as it was over 20 years ago! 

When 31-year-old Renée paired a vintage yellow gown with berry lips and Old Hollywood waves, it landed her a spot on all the Oscars best-dressed lists. (In fact, this is still considered one of the most iconic Oscars looks of all time!) Only a month later, Bridget Jones’s Diary was released, skyrocketing her to global fame.

For her role as Roxie Hart in Chicago, she chopped off her long hair, and then styled it in piecey, Marilyn Monroe-inspired curls for the premiere. (And no, she wasn’t the only one rocking this weird retro hairstyle—Christina Aguilera wore it, too.) With her facing the camera, we can clearly see those famous features: hooded eyes, apple cheeks and bee-stung lips (or at least the lower one).

It was back to the straight bob in 2003, sans bangs, which gets my vote as Renée’s “Life Cut.” The 2000s were all about the blonde bombshell look, so she could have easily leaned into that and grown her hair long. But she has specifically attributed her success to not playing sexy roles,² and this haircut was part of that image. 

If she looks a little fuller in the face here, it’s because she was filming the Bridget Jones sequel at the time. For each movie, she embarked on a 4,000-calorie-a-day diet in order to gain over 20 pounds. “It’s easier for me this time round because I know what I have to do and how to do it,” she said in 2003. “I have to stick to it because I found out last time that one donut does not do a thing—you have to eat 20 a day to get results.”³

The next year, she won her first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress in Cold Mountain), securing permanent A-list status. This also happens to be one of my favourite Renée looks of all time. After playing Bridget Jones, her hair is a bit longer here, with slightly darker roots—she was doing Ombré long before its time! Also note her naturally hooded eyes, which give her a distinctive look in a sea of Hollywood blondes.

Next, she went brunette for her role in Cinderella Man. While the tone is okay and doesn’t clash with her complexion, it’s just too dark and washes her out. See how much blush she’s wearing to compensate? It also seems to exaggerate the fuzzy baby hairs around her hairline. 

The year 2005 was full of changes for Renée in more ways that one. After dabbling with brunette at the beginning of the year, she surprised everyone by stepping out with red hair and bangs two months later. (I think she pulls this colour off nicely.) Meanwhile, she was in a whirlwind romance with country singer Kenny Chesney, who she married that spring only to divorce him four months later!

After all the hair colour experiments, she returned to blonde (and has stuck with this colour ever since). By this time, she was 37, but it doesn’t look like any of her features had changed—yet. The only thing I suspect she may have been doing is a little Botox, since her forehead is incredibly smooth and reflecting the light like crazy!

It was in 2007 that the first reports of cosmetic interventions began to surface. The Daily Mail ran this exact photo with the headline: “Has ruddy-faced Renée Zellweger taken beauty treatments too far?” The article went on to reveal that she was known to follow a “harsh beauty routine” that included “facial sandblasting”—a radical three-hour treatment that leaves your skin “red and traumatized.”⁴

A year later, and her skin definitely looks worse for wear from all the aggressive microdermabrasion treatments. Underneath the makeup (and compared to her body), her face appears to be inflamed, with enlarged pores and a rough texture that were never there before. All are side effects of over-exfoliation!

Fortunately, by the time the Golden Globes rolled around, her complexion seemed to have recovered. But she was still getting bad press—this time for her Victorian-inspired curly updo. “Did she style her hair with an egg beater?” asked Allure. “We need a new category for this one: Big Mess. (We can’t even say Hot Mess.)”⁵ 

After being mocked for the previous year’s hairstyle, is it any wonder that Renée went for a radical chop for her 41st birthday? (I wouldn’t even have recognized her!) “It’s not worth keeping after a while,” she said about her previously long hair. “It had to go. Shed the old.”⁶ Later that year, the press was almost gleeful that her career was slowing down. (She was called “long in the tooth,” and facing “an unforgiving industry that doles out few juicy roles for women over 40.”⁷)

In 2010, Renée decided to step away from moviemaking, a hiatus that would end up lasting six years. Even back then, there were rumours that she “messed up her face”⁷—but there’s no sign of that in this rare red carpet appearance two years later. She was 43 here, and looks remarkably natural and well-rested—more so than she did in her 30s! Sure, she’s probably had some Botox and lip filler, but nothing radical.

It was in 2013 that Renée first debuted her “new face.” I can remember blogging about this at the time, but the mainstream press actually didn’t pick up on it until another event, a year later. Obviously, what’s different is her eyes—they’re much more wide open, without the hooded lids. That one change alone makes her look like a different person! 

A year later, all hell broke loose when she showed up to an event looking like this. She was called “unrecognizable” and accused of “doing a Michael Jackson” with extensive plastic surgery. Again, it’s the removal of her distinctive hooded lids that makes her look so different. Apparently, so much skin was taken out that her brows dropped, leaving her without any eyelid space at all! As for the rest of her face, she appears to have an excessive amount of filler in her cheeks, along with Botox around her eyes and her forehead.

“I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows. My friends say that I look peaceful. I am healthy,” was Renée’s response to the plastic surgery uproar in 2014.⁸ Even still, when she returned to the big screen in 2016, her eyes had changed once again. The hooded folds are back, suggesting that she quietly had her blepharoplasty reversed. However, the skin still looks flat, probably because all the fat was removed in the initial procedure.

The eyelid situation got a little better in 2017. Here, you can see that her upper eyelids have filled out, so she likely had some sort of fat grafting procedure to restore the lost volume. Also notice the position of her eyebrows, which went from touching her eyelashes in 2014 to an inch higher here! 

By the time she turned 50 in 2019, whatever she had done to her eyelids had “settled,” and the area seemed back to normal. But her brows were a different story. If you compare them to, say, 2006, they’re distinctly higher here—something that doesn’t just happen with age. Also note her upper lip, which shows signs of the “keyhole” filler technique. The ring of lip liner also does not help!

When Renée won her second Oscar (capping off an incredible career comeback), it was like going back in time. She looked exactly like her old self, with no signs of her previously well-documented misadventures in cosmetic procedures. Whatever her team did here, it was magic! 

That brings us to Renée’s most recent red carpet appearance... and I’m not sure what happened. In the two years since her Oscar win, her eyelids have become dramatically more hooded, to the point where they are likely restricting her vision. (Lest you think this is just a bad photo, nope—they looked like this in every single take!) As for the rest of her features, she still has the keyhole lip look, and a surprising lack of crow’s feet or forehead lines.

The best celebrity before and afters fly under the radar—when the changes are so subtle and gradual, you don’t even notice them at the time. Renée took the opposite approach when she stepped out after altering her most famous feature: her eyes. And she wanted us to believe her new look was from “getting healthy”? You have to laugh!

Here’s what the experts think happened. “It appears that she had an upper eyelid lift, which is very common,” says Dr. David Saadat. “It is a very easy procedure, however, the effect is that it changes the eyelid-eyebrow relationship. As you can tell, hers has changed dramatically and she almost looks like a different person. It is very likely she has had Botox in her upper face as well.”⁹

Dr. Julian De Silva agrees. “It seems that Renée Zellweger had too much soft tissue removed during an upper blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery). The human eye can detect even a 1 millimeter difference in the eyes, which is why eyelid surgery is so delicate. The goal of facial plastic surgery should be to rejuvenate the patient’s face, not completely change it.”¹⁰

However, Dr. Gary Linkov believes she had several procedures even before her radical new look in 2013. “In 2005, age 36, what I’m seeing here is that Renée Zellweger seems to have had a brow lift. Notice how that lateral brow is now more lifted. When you compare the head of the brow to the tail of the brow, there’s an upward slope... and there’s just more infrabrow space, the space below the brow and above the eyelid. So I think she had a brow lift at this point and possibly along with that a canthoplasty to reposition the eye into a bit more youthful position.”¹¹

“Moving on to 2013, at age 44, I think she may have had cheek implants at this point, plus or minus fat transfer to the face. The face looks fuller in parts. Even though she naturally has full cheeks, I think she was naturally starting to lose some of that volume and it looks restored but in a very specific type of way.”¹¹

He, too, speculates that she had eyelid surgery, and possibly a brow lift, and then revision procedures on both areas several years later. But wait—there’s more. “In 2019, at the age of 50, I think she may have had a face lift,” he adds. “In 2021, at the age of 52, I think she may have had additional fat transfer to the face, maybe also some filler... maybe a combination of the two. In 2022, age 53, with some of these recent photos, what I’m seeing is that she may have had a revision cheek implant. This is starting to make her look very different from what she looked like originally.”¹¹

All of that tinkering doesn’t come cheap. In fact, Dr. Linkov estimates that she has spent over $300,000 on various cosmetic procedures over the years.

But as recently as 2022, Renée denounced anti-aging products and proclaimed that she loves getting older: “All those ads telling us we don’t need to look our real age if we just buy all their creams and their fixes and all that garbage they want to sell us? I’m like, what, you’re saying I’m not valuable any more because I’m 53? Is that what you’re saying? There is a big difference between being your absolute best, most vibrant self and wanting to be what you’re not. To be vibrant and beautiful you must embrace your age, otherwise you are living apologetically and to me that’s not beautiful at all.”¹²

It’s a nice sentiment, but coming from her, it rings a bit hollow, does it not?