Renee Zellweger: “My Friends Say that I Look Peaceful. I Am Healthy”

When Renee Zellweger appeared at the Elle Woman in Hollywood event over the weekend, everybody noticed the actress is looking great. She laid low for about a year, and now she came to amaze them all. In the interview with People, she explained that she is living a healthy life, so feeling and looking great is not a problem.

Here’s the interview with People.

“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,” Zellweger, 45, says of the attention she received after an appearance at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards in Beverly Hills on Monday.

Calling the conversation about her appearance “silly,” she says she is choosing to address it because “it seems the folks who come digging around for some nefarious truth which doesn’t exist won’t get off my porch until I answer the door.”

“My friends say that I look peaceful. I am healthy,” Zellweger continues. “For a long time I wasn’t doing such a good job with that. I took on a schedule that is not realistically sustainable and didn’t allow for taking care of myself. Rather than stopping to recalibrate, I kept running until I was depleted and made bad choices about how to conceal the exhaustion. I was aware of the chaos and finally chose different things.”

That healthier, slower-paced lifestyle – and her happy relationship with boyfriend Doyle Bramhall – helped her turn a corner. “I did work that allows for being still, making a home, loving someone, learning new things, growing as a creative person and finally growing into myself,” she says.

“People don’t know me in my 40s,” says Zellweger, who prefers to lead a quiet life with Bramhall and a close circle of friends. Recently, she pitched in to help her pal and longtime publicist, Nanci Ryder, who is battling ALS, at the ALS Association Golden West Chapter’s annual Walk to Defeat ALS in Los Angeles.

“People don’t know me [as] healthy for a while,” says Zellweger. “Perhaps I look different. Who doesn’t as they get older?! Ha. But I am different. I’m happy.”