For a woman electrified by the spotlight, Judy Garland’s mood offstage could be dim. Halfway through Judy, set in 1968 during an erratic London residency, the singer (Renée Zellweger) slumps at a makeup table and asks through smudged black tears, “What if I can’t do it again?”
Fortunately, Jeremy Woodhead, the movie’s hair and makeup designer, was ready to wipe away those hand-painted mascara tracks for a fresh take. Though Zellweger’s performance stirs deep emotions, continuity called for sleight of hand for the tear-streaked makeup, says Woodhead: “It’s easier to try and control it.”
That tension between vulnerability and technical precision made Garland a riveting star. It’s also central to Zellweger’s portrayal—elastic yet tightly orchestrated, from her snaggled teeth to the theatrical gestures minted in MGM musicals. Still, the first person that director Rupert Goold had to convince about the casting was Zellweger herself. “I thought they were a little crazy!” says the 50-year-old blonde, who didn’t quite see herself as the jet-haired Hollywood legend. But Goold was drawn to an “everyman” quality in Zellweger’s early roles. And her recent absence from the screen—coupled with tabloids “being catty about the fact that she doesn’t look like she did when she did Jerry Maguire,” the director adds—resonated with him. “That patina in Renée is also very interesting in Judy. I wanted to feel both the actor and the performance.”
Initial makeup tests used a full kit of facial prosthetics to make Zellweger’s delicate bone structure more like Gar- land’s stronger features, but only Judy’s button nose stayed (“I missed it when we were finished!” jokes Zellweger). The rest fell to Woodhead’s “trickery,” eyeliner included. “Anybody who has probably had a couple of martinis might not apply it perfectly,” he says.
If mimicry is a pitfall of any biopic, the key was a mind’s-eye interpretation: Judy at her most Judy. A choppier wig lent a “slight Elvisy quality,” says Goold; brown contact lenses with enlarged irises evoked Garland’s gaze. But the on-set antics were Zellweger’s own. Goold recalls how she would slip her veneers halfway on and “flash them before romantic scenes, like Shrek.” —Laura Regensdorf