Renée Zellweger still can't talk about her brief union to Kenny Chesney without triggering tears, as she admits to Life magazine that their tabloid-topping bust-up was "devastating."

"Well, I'm sure that if you buy groceries, you might have read something about it," the scrunch-faced Oscar-winner says about seeking a fraud-based annulment from the cowboy-hatted country crooner in September 2005 after four months of not-so-wedded-bliss. "It's not on the top of my favorite things that have ever happened."

Renée, who is out stumping for "Miss Potter," can't stop the waterworks as she sniffles, "I'm not a superficial person. I don't care about what's on the grocery-store shelves. That's just salt in the wound. But it's not a television show. I lived it."

Still, she isn't thrilled that one of most painful episodes of her life -- she and Chesney cited a "miscommunication of the objective of their marriage" as the reason for the annulment -- was turned into tabloid fodder.

"[A breakup] is a very sad experience for anyone to go through, and it's not fun when people decide that it's a lovely thing to capitalize on," says Zellweger. "But you're oblivious to that because you are living the reality of the experience -- which is devastating."

And although the exes were seen together several times after parting ways, the actress is reluctant to discuss whether they're still tight.

"I'll tell you that I was saddened. I'll tell you that it took ... it's, it's not something I could [reason] away," she carefully sidesteps. "It's something that I'll live through, but I don't want to talk about it beyond that because it matters to me."

Renée admits she was never someone who fantasized about walking down the aisle ("It was more about it being the right thing to do") but apparently isn't averse to retying the knot: "If the circumstances are right, then sure."

But she appears to be steeling herself just in case the whole domestic bliss thing doesn't pan out, answering with a reticent "maybe" when asked if she thinks she'll fall in love again.

"I'm different than I was entering into [the relationship with Chesney]," Zellweger explains. "And so, I'm open to something new ... I just don't have any expectations. That doesn't mean that I'm not a romantic, and it doesn't mean that I don't have things that I believe in, because I do."

Those things include taking a laissez-faire approach to family planning.

"I don't think about it," says Renée, who will soon begin filming the football flick "Leatherheads" with rumored ex George Clooney. "I don't believe in prerequisites for happiness. It's not a mantra, it's just my composition. I don't have a list of things I need in order to be happy. I like to take the good that's in the mix [of life] and use that to create the happiness today."