Revealed: Bridget Jones star Renée Zellweger’s household tree that exhibits she is nearly as British as her alter ego

When filming began on the latest Bridget Jones movie last spring, Renée Zellweger ditched her native Texan drawl and effortlessly slipped back into the Home Counties accent of her fictional alter ego.

The 55-year-old American actress kept up this impressive linguistic feat throughout the 12-week filming schedule for Mad About The Boy.

But Renée’s impeccable English enunciation might be attributed to more than the speech expert hired 25 years ago for her first outing as the world’s most famous singleton.

For, as the Mail can reveal this week, the Oscar-winning star is, in fact, a quarter British. 

Renée’s grandmother, Dorothy, was born and raised in a house which still stands not far from London’s Waterloo Station – little more than a mile from the second-floor flat where fictional Bridget bemoaned her single status and dreamt of marrying Mark Darcy.

Research by this newspaper has pieced together her family’s past and has uncovered a heart-warming story, one which stretches back more than 100 years and begins with Renée’s great-grandmother Elizabeth, from Worcester, and her husband Pius, Dorothy’s parents.

Swiss-born Pius Zgraggen worked as a porter at some of London’s swankiest hotels, among them The Ritz and The Savoy, at a time when such establishments were flooded with international stars, Hollywood moguls, politicians and royalty. 

He transported the luggage of the rich and famous, little realising that within a few generations a member of his own family would enjoy the same kind of celebrity as those he served.

Born in Katy, Texas in April 1969, Renée has previously spoken of her European roots. Her father, electrical engineer Emil Zellweger, is from the Swiss town of Au in St Gallen but grew up largely in Australia, while her mother, Kjellfrid was born and raised in Norway before moving to the US to work as a governess in Texas. They met while travelling to North America and married in Quebec.

It wasn’t until last month, in an interview by her Bridget Jones’ co-star Hugh Grant which featured in Vogue magazine, that the actress revealed for the first time that her half-British father once worked in Ealing in West London. 

‘His mum was from Waterloo,’ she told an astonished Grant, who replied: ‘Get out! So you are a quarter English after all?’

Renée’s grandmother Dorothy was born in London in January 1915 in a terraced house in Colnbrook Street near Elephant and Castle. Within a couple of years, she had moved with her parents to 111 Stamford Street, a short walk from The Savoy. 

The eldest of three daughters – her sister Josephine was born in 1918 and Rita was born in 1921 – Dorothy’s middle name, Kathleen, is one which Renée shares.

Dorothy’s mother, Renée’s great-grandmother Elizabeth, was the daughter of a butler from the village of Martley near Worcester. Her father Pius, known to his friends as Bill, was born in Gurtnellen in Switzerland. After an apprenticeship in the hotel industry, he moved to London in 1904 aged 20. 

Two years later he began working at the newly opened Ritz in Piccadilly, owned by Swiss businessman Cesar Ritz. During the time Bill Zgraggen worked there, the hotel was a favourite haunt of the then Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII.

Bill moved to The Savoy in 1918. A delve into the hotel’s historic archives this week turned up a yellowing index card showing that his wage was 10 shillings a week – around 50p and roughly £15 in today’s money.

According to The Savoy’s in-house archivist Susan Scott: ‘This salary would have been augmented by tips from many of the wealthy guests, so positions like this one were quite sought after.’

The Savoy, which opened in 1889 and was the first hotel to be lit by electricity and have a lift, was popular with Americans who travelled to London to see operas in the adjacent Savoy Theatre.

Among those who swept through its grand entrance just off The Strand while Renée’s great-grandfather worked there was Fred Astaire, who famously danced on the hotel roof with his sister Adele in 1923. 

Here, in the same year, American actress Tallulah Bankhead caught the eye of West End matinee idol Sir Gerald du Maurier, father of the novelist Daphne du Maurier, who then cast her in his next production.

Others who visited included Winston Churchill, the then Prince of Wales and author HG Wells. With a never-ending flow of wealthy and famous guests, discretion was essential for staff members like Bill Zgraggen.

In 1927, Bill was promoted and transferred to The Savoy’s sister hotel, The Berkeley, which at the time was situated on Piccadilly, roughly opposite The Ritz. He later worked at various other grand establishments which have long since disappeared including the Kensington Palace Hotel and the luxurious Hotel Cecil.

His final position, during the 1940s, was as head porter at Brown’s in Mayfair. Founded in 1832 and London’s oldest luxury hotel, it was here, while at work, that Bill suffered a heart attack in 1946. 

An obituary in the London publication the Swiss Observer said ‘his cheerfulness and kindliness made him liked wherever he went and his early demise is deeply felt by his friends far and near’. His widow Elizabeth remained at 111 Stamford Street until she died, aged 74, in March 1959.

By then, Elizabeth’s daughter Dorothy (Renée’s grandmother) was living in Australia after she married a Swiss man – painter and decorator Hans Emil Zellweger – in 1934. Their son Emil Erich Zellweger, Renée’s father, had been born in Switzerland in 1937.

After the war, the couple emigrated to Australia with Emil and his younger sister Rita. In the late 1950s, aged 21, Renée’s father moved briefly to London to work. His engineering career took him all over the world before he met Renée’s Norwegian mother and settled in the US.

Renée’s grandmother, Dorothy, meanwhile, occasionally returned to the UK from Australia to visit family. She died in Sydney aged 78 in August 1993.

The youngest of her two sisters, Rita, married and moved to Ottery St Mary, Devon, where she died in 2006. Renée remained in touch with her British great aunts and even invited them to the Bridget Jones set in London.

A family source says that Josephine and Rita appeared in a wedding scene which was later cut from the film. Her children, who are first cousins once removed to Renée and still live in the South West, told the Mail they are aware of their famous relative but have never met her.

Remarkably, Renée’s four outings as Bridget have seen the actress return to London, to the very streets where her close ancestors once lived.

Had she revealed the truth about her British family from the start, she might have seen off the misplaced outrage sparked when news broke that an American had landed the coveted role of the quintessentially British Bridget Jones back in 2000. 

Her performances have since silenced her critics. She has spoken of her fondness for all things British, including M&S ready meals.

Her relationship with Plymouth-born mechanic-turned TV presenter Ant Anstead, with whom she shares a home in California, has also seen her moving closer towards her British roots.

When she appeared on the red carpet for the premiere in London with her 45-year-old boyfriend and his family, speculation mounted that the star might be about to join the ranks of Bridget’s so-called ‘smug marrieds’. 

The couple were joined by Ant’s two eldest children, Amelie, 21, Archie, 18, and Ant’s parents, Nigel and Sue.

Could marriage into a British family really be on the cards for the divorced actress? If so, then she wouldn’t be the first member of her family to find love on these shores. 

A happy ending would mark the culmination of an extraordinary journey which began more than a 120 years ago when hard-working Bill Zgraggen left Switzerland for England determined to better himself.