Renée Zellweger Says She Doesn’t Have Instagram Because She Was Raised Right

Hollywood, by and large, has completely given itself over to Instagram. You can now catch everyone from Nicole Kidman to Michelle Pfeiffer to Jennifer Aniston regularly posting on the platform. Incidentally, those actresses, and others late to the platform, all joined right before they had a major project to promote. Not only does Instagram provide a direct link to their fans, but the act of an A-List hold-out breaking down and finally singing up for the social network usually leads to headlines in and of itself. (When Aniston joined last month, ahead of the premier of The Morning Show, she temporarily broke her page because she was gaining followers too fast.)

So one might have expected Renée Zellweger to sign up sometime over the past year as she’s made a gradual return to acting. (Instagram, conveniently, has @ReneeZellweger on hold.) Not only did she have a Netflix show to promote earlier this year with What/If, but her role in Judy is still the odds-on favorite to be rewarded with the Best Actress Oscar statuette come next February. What better time to finally get social?

During a recent Los Angeles Times actress roundtable the moderators noted that while all of the other actresses at the table (that would be Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron, and Nora “Awkwafina” Lum) were devoted IG users, Zellweger remained a hold out.

While Zellweger seems to admit she’s considered it, she credited her upbringing with the fact that she’s just not ready to share too much with the general public.

“I think about this a lot. And I think about the way that I grew up and the way that I was raised,” she said. “My parents are very private people. And we didn’t talk about family things out in public. And I just feel uncomfortable with it.

“I think our generation is probably the last to have some expectation of privacy. And so it’s a peculiar thing when it doesn’t occur to the younger generation that it’s not weird at all to pull out your phone and take a picture of somebody a foot from their face without saying hello, because that’s just the nature of things these days. And it’s perfectly normal. And I get that. I completely understand it. And I have no problem with it.”

Zellweger has remained particularly private throughout her career. Despite tabloid rumors linking her to a number of famous love interests over the years, she’s rarely spotted out on the red carpet with any of them since her romance with Jim Carey (during which they happened to be promoting Me, Myself, an Irene). In seven years, she only made one public appearance with most recent partner, Doyle Bramhall II. So, she’s not exactly the flaunting it out in public type.

Though, if she wanted to be, Lopez, at the same roundtable, shared her secrets to being good at being a celebrity (at the behest of Theron).

“I feel like there is a responsibility when you’re a public person,” said Lopez. “You can’t get around it. I know we all want to be like, “just want to be me” and I just want to do this and I just want to do that. And I don’t care what people say or think. But we have to because we care what people say. And so it’s just about being your best self. And I think that’s where I keep my mind. It’s like you think I’m a good celebrity because what I’m trying to do is put my best foot forward all the time and still be myself, still be authentic to who I am.”