Renée Zellweger will return to the big screen as Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones' Baby soon, bringing back a character that connects to so many groups of people in all different ways.
For example, she's formed a special bond with the LGBT community by not only playing out the friendship with her gay bestie Tom (James Callis), but also by simply staying true to herself and seeking someone who loves her exactly the way she is.
In an interview with Advocate, Zellweger explained, "Bridget doesn't necessarily fit the paradigm but she succeeds anyway. She loves herself and she accepts who she is. She makes it OK for all of us to be human."
However, when tabloids began reporting that her ex-husband Kenny Chesney was gay after she cited "fraud" as the reason for annulling their marriage in 2005, she was saddened and hurt.
"I forgot about that. It's a pretty big thing to forget, isn't it? That made me sad," she admitted. "It made me sad that somehow people were using that as a way to be cruel and calling someone gay as a pejorative, which has fateful consequences. Of course, there's the bigger-picture problem of why anyone had to make up a story at all."
Speaking of made-up stories, Zellweger also addressed the rumors that she had found her "pearl" in one of her gay best friends in real life.
"I'm lucky to have handfuls [of gay male confidants]. The majority of my closest friends are gay, and I have my pearl," she explained. "I went to Miami for New Year's Eve some years back with him and his boyfriend, and we got paparazzied on the beach."
She recalled a funny moment, "We had a very Bridget Jones moment: He had no desire to be photographed in his trunks, so he told me, 'You need to get out of here and go for a run right now!' Some tabloid ran the photos and wrote, 'Has Renée finally found her pearl?' I was like, 'Aww, he's my pearl!' He's family to me."
Read more about Zellweger's connection with the LGBT community on Advocate.