@MsJamieClayton @THR @rosemcgowan — Chris Berthelsen http://disq.us/p/19xjk3a

It's interesting to compare the comments that sided with the outrage McGowan expresses and those that feel she has blown the article way out of proportion. Those comments in support of her are often characterized by the emotional intensity of experience. Those opposed, by a bemused puzzlement over what all the bother is about. What fascinates me is that within Gleiberman's article, we find both.

He is struggling. His prose wanders about, as though he is searching for a way to grasp the deeper regions of the concepts he is exploring, but his experience denies him -- or rather his lack of experience with the gnawing, oppressive, tar-pit resistance women in Hollywood (and everywhere!) battle against every day.

I, too, had an emotional response to an actress who, unambiguously, made a dramatic change to her appearance using plastic surgery: Jennifer Grey. Her career almost disappeared afterward, but not because she had shifted her position on some arbitrary industry scale of acceptable beauty. It was because she had made such an indelible impression that when we saw her after her surgery, she looked so different that we had difficulty accepting this was the same actress.

Grey made wonderful and effective choices in response: she took this impact with good humor, commenting wryly on her situation and even allowing in-jokes into her subsequent roles. She rebuilt her career and re-won the hearts of audiences. We watched movies, sitcoms, TV dramas she was in not because of where she fell on the above scale, but because she brought the same energy, talent, and commitment to her roles that had originally endeared her to us. And industry professionals hired her because they saw the same thing.

Well, Mr. Gleiberman, industry professionals have hired Renee Zellweger, again, because of her talent and commitment, not because of the direction in which her face has or has not grown. And the manifestation of that talent is what you should be critiquing, and even more, what you should be championing. We should all be championing women with talent and persistence and compassion, because -- just as companies who increase women in C-suite positions increase their profits dramatically -- our industry needs more people like this. And because it's the right thing to do.

Gleiberman's paragraph on Jerry McGuire exposed the truth (and the lie) in the writer's position: he gave all the power for the movie to Tom Cruise. When he came around to Zellweger, she was reduced to this: "And that, in the end, was exactly what the movie was about: Could Cruise, as Jerry Maguire, leave aside his Cruise-control mystique to embrace something real? 'You complete me' is one of the great lines in modern romantic movies because of the way it takes its inner meaning from who Renée Zellweger is. This is what completes you: someone who looks just like this. What completes you is reality."

"You complete me" didn't take its power from who Renee Zellweger is, or how she looks, Mr. Gleiberman. Its power came from the heartfelt honesty of the performance she gave to a character we became invested in. If you think the emotional impact of movies comes from some knee-jerk response to a performer's appearance, then I suggest you re-view a few thousand of the films Hollywood has produced. They might inspire you when you look at the screen to see, rather than a gloriously ordinary person, a gloriously extraordinary actress.