While Zellweger wasn’t completely unknown going into Jerry Maguire, the film certainly helped her career in many ways.
Her role on TV’s Spin City only began a few months before Jerry Maguire hit theaters so she would have been a mostly unknown going into the audition.
A role opposite Tom Crusie would have been huge for her.
The role, of course, ended up going to Renee Zellweger whose famous line “you had me at hello” would become only one of the endlessly quotable, and parodied, lines in movie history.