Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. She has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and has established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses in recent years. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the 2001 comedy Bridget Jones's Diary and as Roxie Hart in the 2002 musical Chicago, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain in 2004. Her other films include Me, Myself and Irene (2000), Shark Tale (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), and Bee Movie (2007).

Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas, a western suburb of Houston. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au, St. Gallen in Switzerland and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business. Zellweger's mother, Kjellfried Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian-born and of Sami origin, and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States in order to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas. Zellweger described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians". She has an older brother, Andrew.

In junior high school, Zellweger actively took part in several sports, including soccer, basketball, baseball and football. She attended Katy High School, where she was a cheerleader, a gymnast, and a drama club member. Zellweger acted in several school plays and was voted the "Best Looking" of her class before graduating from high school in 1987. After high school, she went to the University of Texas at Austin to major in English language. Zellweger was a good student, and made the Dean's List several times. At the beginning she took a drama class only because she needed a fine arts credit to complete her degree, but the experience made her appreciate how much she loved acting. During this time, she supported herself by taking jobs as a waitress in Austin, Texas and worked maintenance at The Velvet Touch in Flint, Michigan. In 1991, Zellweger graduated from university with a BA degree in English. She considered moving to Hollywood but decided to stay in her home state, Texas, to seek more experience. Her first job after graduation was working in a beef commercial, at the same time she started to audition for roles around Houston.