Renée Zellweger believes that her relationship with HGTV star Ant Anstead was written in the stars.
The actress opened up about her new relationship in a cover story for Harper’s Bazaar, revealing that she thinks her boyfriend “has somehow been a gift” from her late friend, publicist Nanci Ryder, who died in June 2020 from ALS with Zellweger at her side. When asked if she thinks their meeting was the result of divine intervention by Ryder, she says, “Yeah, we do joke about that. She’s always doing her best. It made me smile. It made me smile to think on this, yeah, the serendipity of it all.”
Zellweger and Anstead have been dating since June of last year when they first met while filming an episode of his new Discovery+ TV show, Celebrity IOU Joyride, a Property Brothers spinoff in which famous guests gift someone they love a one-of-a-kind car transformation. Following her friend’s death, the actress wanted to do something special for twin brothers Jerome and Jerald Cowan, the nurses who cared for Ryder in her final years, which led her to sign onto the show.
But while the two of them are definitely a love match, the Judy star admits there’s still a lot of ways that they’re very different people. For example, Anstead posts on Instagram almost every day, sharing much of his life with his fans online, while she prefers to stay off social media entirely and admits, “I don’t look at my phone sometimes until six o’clock at night.”
News that the couple had gotten together came just days after Anstead’s divorce from his ex-wife and Flip or Flop co-host, Christina Haack, was finalized. He and Haack share a 1-year-old son, Hudson. Anstead was also previously married to Louise Anstead, with whom he shares two teenage children, Amelie and Archie. Zellweger has also been married once before, wedding country star Kenny Chesney in 2005 and divorcing the same year. Prior to Anstead, she was linked to musician Doyle Bramhall II from 2012 to 2019.
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