Italy's Renée Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

Italy's Ren�e Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

Italy's Renée Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

I was born into the business. My teacher was my father. He had four daughters and most evenings at dinner he would try to teach us something about intonation. He had a saying: "Your voice is the soundtrack of your life." One of my sisters also entered the business and is now a dubbing director as well as a dubbing artist. It was a bit like growing up as a circus child, really.
My first job was as the 10-year-old daughter in The Goodbye Girl. I've no idea how many other films I've dubbed since then. I've voiced Renée Zellweger in both her Bridget Jones movies and several others. I've studied her diction, her movements and her breathing so much that I feel I know her. We've not met, though - the only actor I've both dubbed and met is Ellen Pompeo, the star of Grey's Anatomy. She came up and hugged me at a conference in Milan in the summer.
The key to this profession is obsession with detail. To get the same effects as in the original, I try, as far as I can, to imitate the actor's movements as I say her lines. Anyone who saw me working would think I was nuts. I lay down on the floor for the bedroom scenes in the Bridget Jones films. At the end of one of them, there's a scene in which Bridget is badly out of breath.
I ran twice around the block before we recorded it.