Best Actress 2001: Renée Zellweger in "Bridget Jones's Diary"

Only once in a while does the Academy give a nomination for a performance that is neither very deep nor very complex nor very dramatic but instead, simply laugh-out-funny, very original and memorable.

The nomination for Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary is such a case.

Bridget is no woman suffering the loss of a son, facing serious illness or being forced to become a prostitute to support her bed-ridden mother. Instead, she is a single woman in London who, after having been alone and unhappy for years, suddenly finds herself with two possible romantic interests.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a real feel-good movie and Renée Zellweger in the title role gives a performance that is a role model in comedic brilliance. Like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, she creates a unique, flawed but totally loveable and unforgettable heroine for whom love is a very complicated matter.

Of course Bridget Jones’s Diary is no Annie Hall but simply a funny and entertaining movie, carried by Renée Zellweger’s equally funny and entertaining performance.

Her greatest success in this movie is that she never takes herself, the role of Bridget or the movie too seriously – instead she portrays all of Bridget’s facets in a very nonchalant-way and that helps to make Bridget so charming and winning.

Renée is also able to make Bridget very real. She is a very typical human being – thinking negatively but always mixed with high hopes at the same time. She’s a bit clumsy, she doesn’t know when to talk and she surely always speaks before she thinks, but, as Mark Darcy puts it, we love her just the way she is.

The comedic highlights of this performance are those moments when Bridget is simply making a fool of herself which is like a car accident – you simply can’t look away. But unlike a car accident it’s also absolutely hilarious. The best scene is easily when she is introducing a new book at an important social event and awkwardly makes her way through an improvised, awful speech before she finally has to introduce her boss which results in probably the greatest mix of acting and voice-over that one can ever find. Renée’s look on her face when she is trying to say “Mr. Fitzherbert” while the little voice in her head is telling to her to say “Tits pervert” is absolutely uproarious.

This is not the only case when Renée’s voice-over is fantastic. For the whole movie, she keeps delivering joke after joke most perfectly and blends it very well with the context of the movie.

Renée also works great with her two male co-stars and she always makes the idea that both Mark and Daniel could be interested in her very believable. Renée always makes sure that both parts of the movie, the comedy and the romance, are constantly connected with each other. The movie can be funny at its most romantic moments and romantic when it’s funny thanks to Renée who combined all this in the character of Bridget.

So, this is surely not your typical Oscar-performance and Bridget is certainly not the most challenging character when it comes to depth and complexity but Renée Zellweger gives a hilarious and unforgettable performance that gets