The Bridget Jones-esque antics continued even after she left the awards show.
As Renée Zellweger prepares to reprise her role as the titular character in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy alongside Hugh Grant, she’s opening up having her very own Bridget Jones mishap two decades ago. While showing off a freshly cropped pixie cut to celebrate her British Vogue cover, Zellweger looked back at another one of her most memorable looks: The strikingly dark fringed updo she paired with a red Carolina Herrera mermaid gown at the 2005 Oscars. The Academy Award-winning actress revealed that she was forced to navigate an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction as a man inadvertently “ripped” the lace-trimmed skirt right off of her dress.
“First of all, it's an incredible dress. I love that dress,” she told the publication about the form-fitting dress with a flared hemline, explaining that it had a bustle and was “weighted and stuffed at the bottom so that it holds its shape.” While these structural elements helped give the Carolina Herrera dress its statuesque silhouette, they didn’t fare well when a gentleman stepped on her train as she was preparing to leave for a night of parties.
“I kept walking in the other direction and it ripped it right off my dress from right beneath my booty,” Zellweger recalled, laughing. Horrified, the Cold Mountain star was forced to leave the event by strategically putting her hands behind her to cover herself.
“So I walked in with that pose and I left with that pose,” she joked. “And there were parties and things afterwards, but I needed to go home and do a little bit of a costume change.”
Unfortunately, the antics didn’t start there, as Zellweger realized “I didn't bring my house key” once she got back to her place. She appeared to channel Bridget Jones with her solution: breaking in with “that dress with the hole under my booty.”
“So I had to climb up the balcony to the second floor and climb in through a little bathroom window,” she continued. However, the crisis was averted, and Zellweger still calls the gown one of her favorite looks to date.