Renée Zellweger to Take Break from Acting

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/10/2004 at 08:00 AM EST

Friday will mark the first day of Renée Zellweger's vacation, the star is declaring.

That's the day her Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason opens and the Cold Mountain Oscar winner, 35, says she plans to step away from the limelight, stop acting for a while and discover how it is to be "just a girl."

"I don't see myself climbing into a makeup chair any time soon and taking another role," she tells Reuters. "I feel like I need to take a minute and have a little bit of life experience."

While not specifying how long this break will last, Zellweger already has another film in the can: Ron Howard's The Cinderella Man, in which she plays the wife of Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock (played by Russell Crowe).

As for why she wants this time off, she chronicles her year, including the Oscar win in late February. With a sigh, Zellweger says her golden statuette is still sitting on her bedside table where she left it eight months ago, because she left Los Angeles to start a new job the very next day.

"I put it there so when I woke up in the morning I could see that I really did bring it home," she says. "I haven't really been back until now."