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Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born
March 22, 1976), better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress
and film producer. In 1998 she appeared in three major movies: Overnight
Delivery, Pleasantville, and Twilight. The following year, Witherspoon
appeared in the critically acclaimed Election, which earned her a Golden
Globe nomination. 2001 marked her career's turning point with the breakout
role as "Elle Woods" in the box office hit Legally Blonde, and in 2002 she
starred in Sweet Home Alabama, which became her biggest commercial film
success to date. 2003 saw her return as lead actress and executive
producer of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. In 2005, Witherspoon
received worldwide attention and praise for her portrayal of June Carter
Cash in Walk the Line, which earned her an Academy Award, Golden Globe,
BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Witherspoon married actor and Cruel Intentions co-star Ryan Phillippe in
1999; they have two children, Ava and Deacon. The couple separated at the
end of 2006 and divorced in October 2007. Witherspoon owns a production
company, Type A Films, and she is actively involved in children's and
women's advocacy organizations. She serves on the board of the Children's
Defense Fund (CDF), and was named Global Ambassador of Avon Products in
2007, serving as honorary chair of the charitable Avon Foundation.
Witherspoon was born at the former Southern Baptist Hospital (now the
Ochsner Baptist Medical Center) in New Orleans, Louisiana, where her
parents were living while her father was a student at Tulane University
medical school. Her father, John Witherspoon, is a Georgia-born
otolaryngologist who previously served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S.
Army reserves. Her mother, Betty (née Reese), is from Harriman, Tennessee,
has a Ph.D. in pediatric nursing and works as a professor of nursing at
Vanderbilt University. Witherspoon has claimed to be a descendant of
Scottish-born John Witherspoon, the sixth president of Princeton
University and a signatory of the United States Declaration of
Independence. This genealogical claim, however, has never been verified.
Because Witherspoon's father worked for the U.S. military in Wiesbaden,
Germany, she lived there for four years as a small child. After returning
to the U.S., she settled and spent her childhood in Nashville, Tennessee,
where she was raised as an Episcopalian.
Witherspoon was selected as a fashion model for a florist's television
advertisements at age seven, which motivated her to take acting lessons.
At age eleven she took first place in the Ten-State Talent Fair.
Witherspoon received good grades in school; she loved reading and
considered herself "a big dork who read loads of books." On mentioning her
love for books, she said, "I get crazy in a bookstore. It makes my heart
beat hard because I want to buy everything." Witherspoon attended middle
school at Harding Academy and graduated from the prestigious all-girls'
Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee, during which time she was a
cheerleader. She attended Stanford University as an English literature
major. After completing one year of studies, she left Stanford to pursue
an acting career.
Witherspoon is proud of the "definitive Southern upbringing" she received,
which, as she said, gave her "a sense of family and tradition" and taught
her about "being conscientious about people's feelings, being polite,
being responsible and never taking for granted what you have in your
life." Witherspoon is described as a "multi-achiever" and was given the
nickname "Little Type A" by her parents. On discussing her early
achievements, she told Interview magazine, "I just don't see any of it as
that remarkable. Maybe that's the attitude I choose to have to keep me
sane and keep my feet on the ground. I grew up in an environment where
women accomplished a lot. And if they weren't able to, it was because they
were limited by society."
In 1990, Witherspoon attended an open casting call for The Man in the Moon
with some friends, intending to audition as a bit player. She was instead
cast in the lead role of Dani Trant, a 14-year-old country girl who falls
in love for the first time with her 17-year-old neighbor. Her performance
was regarded as "memorably touching" by Variety magazine, and critic Roger
Ebert commented, "Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes
I've ever seen in a movie." For this role, Witherspoon was nominated for
the Young Artist Award Best Young Actress. Later that year, she made her
TV acting debut in the cable movie Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton
and starring Patricia Arquette. In 1992, Witherspoon appeared in the TV
movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child, portraying a critically ill
young girl. In 1993, she played a young wife in the CBS mini series Return
to Lonesome Dove, and got a starring role as the leading character Nonnie
Parker, a South African girl who must cross 1,250 miles (2,000 km) of the
Kalahari, in the teen-aimed Disney film A Far Off Place. In the same year,
Witherspoon had a minor role in Jack the Bear, which garnered her the
Young Artist Award for Best Youth Actress Co-star. The following year,
Witherspoon acted in another leading role as Wendy Pfister in the 1994
film S.F.W., directed by Jefery Levy.
In 1996, Witherspoon was offered parts in two major movies. She appeared
in the thriller Fear alongside Mark Wahlberg and Alyssa Milano, playing
the role of Nicole Walker, a teenage girl with a handsome boyfriend who
turns out to be a violent psychopath. She was also the leading actress in
the thriller and black comedy Freeway, starring alongside Kiefer
Sutherland and Brooke Shields. Her character, Vanessa Lutz, is a poor girl
living in Los Angeles, who, on the way to her grandmother's home in
Stockton, encounters a freeway serial killer. The film received positive
reviews from the press. Among them was the San Francisco Chronicle, with
Mick LaSalle commenting, "Witherspoon, who does a shrill Texas accent, is
dazzling, utterly believable in one extreme situation after the other."
Witherspoon's performance won her the Best Actress Award at the Cognac
Police Film Festival, and firmly established her as a rising star. The
making of the movie also gave Witherspoon significant acting experience;
as she said, "Once I overcame the hurdle of that movie – which scared me
to death – I felt like I could try anything." Following completion of
Freeway in 1997, Witherspoon took a break from acting in major movies for
a year, and began dating actor Ryan Phillippe. She returned to the screen
in 1998 with major roles in three movies, Overnight Delivery,
Pleasantville and Twilight. In Pleasantville, Witherspoon starred
alongside Tobey Maguire in a tale about a pair of 1990s teenage siblings
who are magically transported into the setting of a 1950s television
series. She portrayed the sister Jennifer, who is mainly concerned about
appearances, relationships, and popularity. Witherspoon's performance
received good reviews and garnered her the Young Hollywood Award for Best
Female Breakthrough Performance. Director Gary Ross said he firmly
believed Witherspoon was going to be an outstanding movie star.
In 1999, Witherspoon starred alongside Alessandro Nivola in the drama
thriller Best Laid Plans; she played Lissa, a woman who schemes with her
lover Nick to escape a small, dead-end town. In this same year, she
co-starred with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe in the drama film
Cruel Intentions, a modern take on the 18th-century French novel Les
Liaisons Dangereuses. Her performance as Annette Hargrove was praised by
the San Francisco Chronicle: "Witherspoon is especially good in the least
flashy role, and even when called upon to make a series of cute devilish
faces, she pulls it off." Coincidentally, she appeared in a music video by
Marcy Playground for the film's soundtrack. In the same year, Witherspoon
and Matthew Broderick starred in the film adaptation of the 1998 novel
Election by Tom Perrotta. She portrayed Tracy Flick, a competitive and
ambitious over-achiever who runs for student body president. She received
vast critical acclaim for her performance and won the Best Actress Award
from the National Society of Film Critics and the Online Film Critics
Society, a first Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award
nomination. Witherspoon also received a rank on the list of 100 Greatest
Film Performances of All Time by Premiere. Academy Award – winning
director Alexander Payne praised her: "She's got that quality that men
find attractive, while women would like to be her friend. But that's just
the foundation. Nobody else is as funny or brings such charm to things.
She can do anything." In spite of her successful performance, Witherspoon
noted in an interview that she struggled to find work after completing the
film, due to typecasting. When analyzing the reasons behind her difficulty
to find work, Witherspoon commented "I think because the character I
played was so extreme and sort of shrewish – people thought that was who I
was, rather than me going in and creating a part. I would audition for
things, and I'd always be the second choice – studios never wanted to hire
me, and I wasn't losing the parts to big box office actresses but to ones
who I guess people felt differently about."
In 2000, Witherspoon received a supporting role in American Psycho and
made a cameo appearance in Little Nicky. She also appeared as a guest star
in season six of Friends, playing the role of Jill Green, Rachel Green's
sister. The next year, Witherspoon provided the voice of Serena in the
animated film The Trumpet of the Swan, produced by Crest Animation
Productions.
2001 marked a significant turning point in Witherspoon's career, when she
starred in the feature film Legally Blonde. She portrayed Elle Woods, a
fashion merchandising major who decides to become a law student in order
to follow her ex-boyfriend to Harvard University. Speaking about Woods'
character, Witherspoon said "When I read Legally Blonde, I was like,
'She's from Beverly Hills, she's rich, she's in a sorority. She has a
great boyfriend. Oh yeah, she gets dumped. Who cares? I still hate her.'
So we had to make sure she was the kind of person you just can't hate."
Legally Blonde was a box office hit, grossing US$96 million domestically.
Witherspoon's performance earned her praise from critics, as the press
began referring to her as "the new Meg Ryan". Roger Ebert commented,
"Witherspoon effortlessly animated this material with sunshine and quick
wit", and Salon.com noted that "she delineates Elle's character
beautifully". Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concluded,
"Witherspoon is a talented comedian who can perk up a scene just by
marching in full of pep and drive and she powers this modest little comedy
almost single-handedly." For her work, Witherspoon garnered her second
Golden Globe Best Actress nomination and an MTV Movie Award for Best
Comedic Performance.
Following the success of Legally Blonde, Witherspoon starred in several
roles. In 2002, Witherspoon provided the voice of the animated character
Greta Wolfcastle in The Simpsons episode The Bart Wants What It Wants. In
the same year, she portrayed Cecily in the comedy The Importance of Being
Earnest, a movie adaptation of a play by Oscar Wilde; she received a Teen
Choice Award nomination for her performance. Her next feature film in 2002
was Sweet Home Alabama, a movie directed by Andy Tennant. Witherspoon,
alongside Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey, played Melanie Carmichael, a
young fashion designer who intends to marry a New York politician but must
return to Alabama to divorce her childhood sweetheart, from whom she has
been separated for seven years. Witherspoon regarded this as a "personal
role" in that the role reminded her of experiences she had when she moved
from her hometown Nashville to Los Angeles. The movie became Witherspoon's
biggest box office hit to date, earning over $35 million in the opening
weekend and grossing over $127 million domestically in the US. Despite the
commercial success, Sweet Home Alabama was given negative reviews by
critics. It was called "a romantic comedy so rote, dull and predictable"
by The Miami Herald, and the press widely agreed that Witherspoon was the
only factor that helped the movie attract a large audience. When
describing Witherspoon's role in the movie, The Christian Science Monitor
concluded, "She is not the movie's main attraction, she is its only
attraction."
In 2003, Witherspoon followed up the success of Legally Blonde by starring
in the sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Her character, Elle
Woods, has become a Harvard-educated lawyer who is determined to protect
animals from cosmetics-industry science tests. The sequel was not as
financially successful as the first movie, and it generated mostly
critical reviews. USA Today considered the movie "plodding, unfunny and
almost cringe-worthy", but also noted that "Reese Witherspoon still does a
fine job portraying the fair-haired lovable brainiac, but her top-notch
comic timing is wasted on the humorless dialogue." Meanwhile, Salon.com
concluded that the sequel "calcifies everything that was enjoyable about
the first movie". Despite being panned by critics, the sequel took over
$39 million in its first five days in the U.S. box office charts and went
on to gross $90 million in the US. Witherspoon received a $15 million
paycheck for the role – a starting point to make her consistently one of
Hollywood's highest paid actresses from 2002 onwards.
In 2004, Witherspoon starred in Vanity Fair, adapted from the 19th-century
classic novel Vanity Fair and directed by Mira Nair. Witherspoon's
character – Becky Sharp – is a woman whose impoverished childhood turns
her into an ambitious person with a ruthless determination to find fortune
and establish herself a position in society. Witherspoon was pregnant
during the filmmaking of this movie and was therefore carefully costumed
to conceal her pregnancy. This pregnancy was not a hindrance to her work,
as Witherspoon believed the gestation had in fact helped her portrayal of
Sharp's character: "I love the luminosity that pregnancy brings, I love
the fleshiness, I love the ample bosom—it gave me much more to play with",
she said. The film and Witherspoon's portrayal of Sharp received good
reviews, as The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Nair's cast is splendid.
Witherspoon does justice to the juicy role by giving the part more
buoyancy than naughtiness." At the same time, The Charlotte Observer
called her work "an excellent performance that's soft around the edges"
and the Los Angeles Times concluded that Becky is "a part Reese
Witherspoon was born to play".
In late 2004, Witherspoon began working alongside Mark Ruffalo on the
romantic comedy Just Like Heaven. Her character, Elizabeth Masterson, is
an ambitious young doctor left in a coma by a serious car accident; her
spirit returns to her old apartment where she later finds true love.
Earlier that year Witherspoon was chosen to portray June Carter Cash, the
second wife of country music singer and songwriter Johnny Cash, in Walk
the Line. She never had the chance to meet Carter Cash, as Witherspoon was
filming Vanity Fair at the time Carter Cash died. Witherspoon performed
her own vocals in the movie, and her songs had to be performed in front of
a live audience. When she learned that she had to perform live,
Witherspoon was so worried that she asked her lawyer to terminate the film
contract. "That was the most challenging part of the role," she later
recalled in an interview, "I'd never sung professionally." Subsequently,
she had to spend six months learning how to sing for the role.
Witherspoon's portrayal of Carter Cash was well received by critics, and
Roger Ebert wrote that her performance added "boundless energy" to the
movie. She won several awards for her performance, including the Golden
Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild, the BAFTA and the Academy Award for
Best Actress in a Lead Role. Besides critical success in the movie
industry, Witherspoon and her co-star in Walk the Line Joaquin Phoenix
received a nomination for "collaborative video of the year" from the CMT
Music Awards. Witherspoon expressed her passion for the movie: "I really
like in this film that it is realistic and portrays sort of a real
marriage, a real relationship where there are forbidden thoughts and
fallibility. And it is about compassion in the long haul, not just the
short easy solutions to problems." She also spoke about June Carter Cash,
stating that she believed Carter Cash was a woman ahead of her time: "I
think the really remarkable thing about her character is that she did all
of these things that we sort of see as normal things in the 1950s when it
wasn't really acceptable for a woman to be married and divorced twice and
have two different children by two different husbands and travel around in
a car full of very famous musicians all by herself. She didn't try to
comply to social convention, so I think that makes her a very modern
woman."
Witherspoon's first post-Oscar role came in the modern-day fairy tale
Penelope, co-starring Christina Ricci. Witherspoon played the supporting
role of Annie, the best friend of Penelope, a girl who has a curse in her
family. The film was produced by Witherspoon's company Type A Films and
premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. The final
release date of Penelope was delayed twice, and the movie was then set for
a February 2008 release.
Witherspoon was back in front of the camera again in November 2006, as
shooting began for the political thriller Rendition. She starred alongside
Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jake Gyllenhaal, playing
Isabella El-Ibrahim, the pregnant wife of a bombing suspect. Rendition was
released in October 2007 and marked Witherspoon's first appearance in
theaters in two years, since the 2005 release of Walk the Line. The movie
received mostly negative reviews, and was generally considered a
disappointment at the Toronto Film Festival. Witherspoon's performance was
also criticized: "Reese Witherspoon is surprisingly lifeless", USA Today
wrote, "She customarily injects energy and spirit into her parts, but
here, her performance feels tamped down." In December 2007, Witherspoon
began filming the holiday comedy Four Christmases, a story about a couple
who have to spend their Christmas Day trying to visit all four of their
divorced parents, and in which she stars alongside Vince Vaughn. The film
was released in November 2008. Despite only receiving average reviews by
critics, the movie became a box office success, earning more than 120
million US dollars domestically, and US$157m worldwide.
In 2009, it was announced that Witherspoon would take on the horror genre
for the first time as a star of Our Family Troubles, which she would
produce under the Type A banner, partnering with Jennifer Simpson,
co-producer of Legally Blonde 2. She also provided the voice for Susan
Murphy, the main character of the computer-animated 3-D feature film
Monsters vs. Aliens, which had a March 27, 2009 release from DreamWorks
Animation. Her future projects include voicing in The Bear and the Bow, a
computer-animated 3-D film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and
distributed by Walt Disney Pictures; the film is scheduled for a release
in Christmas 2011. Another film on the slate for the future is Witherspoon
in a Universal Pictures remake of the 1939 comedy Midnight, scripted by
Michael Arndt.
Witherspoon owns a production company called Type A Films. The company was
at first believed by the media to have been named after her childhood
nickname "Little Miss Type A." However, when asked about the company by
Interview magazine, she clarified the name's origin: "... people think I
named it after myself ... It was actually an in-joke with my family
because at 7 I understood complicated medical terms, such as the
difference between type A and type B personalities. But I just wished I'd
named the company Dogfood Films or Fork or something. You carry that
baggage all your life."
Witherspoon is a long-time supporter of Save the Children, an organization
that helps children around the world through education, health care, and
emergency aid. She also serves on the board of the Children's Defense
Fund, a child advocacy and research group. In 2006, Witherspoon was among
a group of actresses who went to New Orleans, Louisiana in a CDF project
to bring to light the needs of Hurricane Katrina victims. In this trip,
she helped open the city's first Freedom School, as she met and talked
with the children. Witherspoon later called this an experience that she
would never forget.
In 2007, Witherspoon made her first move into the world of endorsements,
as she signed a multi-year agreement to serve as the first Global
Ambassador of cosmetic company Avon Products. She acts as a spokeswoman
for Avon's cosmetic products, and serves as the honorary chair of the Avon
Foundation, a charitable organization that supports women and focuses on
breast cancer research and the prevention of domestic violence.
Witherspoon is also committed to participating in cosmetics product
development and appearing in commercial advertisements. Explaining her
motives for joining the foundation, she said, "As a woman and a mother I
care deeply about the well being of other women and children throughout
the world and through the years, I have always looked for opportunities to
make a difference."
Following the successful release of Legally Blonde, Witherspoon hosted
Saturday Night Live on September 29, 2001. In 2005, she was ranked No. 5
in Teen People magazine's list of most powerful young Hollywood actors. In
2006, Witherspoon was listed among the Time 100, a compilation of the 100
most influential people in the world, as selected annually by Time
magazine. Her featured article was written by friend and fellow co-star in
the two Legally Blonde films, Luke Wilson. In the same year, she was also
selected as one of the "100 Sexiest Women In The World" by the readers of
For Him Magazine. Witherspoon has appeared on the annual Celebrity 100
list by Forbes magazine in 2006 and 2007, at No. 75 and No. 80,
respectively. Forbes also put her on the top ten Trustworthy Celebrities
list, according to the characters she had played on the screen.
In 2006, Star fabricated a story saying Witherspoon was pregnant with her
third child, which led to Witherspoon suing the magazine's parent company
American Media Inc in Los Angeles Superior Court for privacy violation.
She sought unspecified general and punitive damages in the lawsuit,
asserting that the claim harmed her reputation because it suggested she
was hiding the news from producers of her upcoming films.
Witherspoon has been featured four times in the annual "100 Most
Beautiful" issues of People magazine. In 2007, she was selected by People
and the entertainment news program Access Hollywood as one of the best
dressed female stars of the year. A study conducted by E-Poll Market
Research showed that Witherspoon was the most likable female celebrity of
2007. That same year, Witherspoon established herself as the highest-paid
actress in the American film industry, earning $15 to $20 million per
film. In April 2008, Witherspoon appeared as a guest star at the 2008
charitable campaign Idol Gives Back.
Witherspoon met American actor Ryan Phillippe at her 21st birthday party
in March 1997, where she introduced herself to him saying "I think you're
my birthday present." The couple became engaged in December 1998, and
married in Charleston, South Carolina on June 5, 1999 at Wide Awake
Plantation, following the release of the box office hit Cruel Intentions.
They have two children: a daughter named Ava Elizabeth, born September 9,
1999, and a son Deacon Reese, born October 23, 2003. To be able to look
after the children, the couple alternated shooting schedules for their
films.
By 2005, in response to news reports of Witherspoon and Phillippe
receiving marriage counseling, Witherspoon stated, "We've done that in the
past, and it's always struck me as odd that people grabbed onto that story
and made it sound so negative." In December 2005, she said on The Oprah
Winfrey Show, "In what capacity is working on yourself or your marriage a
bad thing? What marriage isn't a journey? ... Nobody's perfect ... We all
have our own set of problems." That same month, Witherspoon also said in
an interview, "I think if anybody rests on the idea that they are perfect
or their life is perfect or their relationship is perfect and is so
troubled about destroying the facade as opposed to getting to what's real,
that is troublesome."
In October 2006, Witherspoon and Phillippe announced that they decided to
separate formally after seven years of marriage. The following month,
Witherspoon filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. In her
petition she sought joint legal custody of their two children and sole
physical custody, with full visitation rights for Phillippe. The couple
had no prenuptial agreement and the couple would be entitled to half of
all assets gained during the marriage under California law, with
Witherspoon's being the more significant. Witherspoon requested that the
court grant no spousal support for Phillippe, which he did not contest. On
May 15, 2007, Phillippe filed for joint physical custody of the couple's
children, and made no motion to block Witherspoon from seeking support
from him. In September 2007, Witherspoon spoke openly about the separation
for the first time when she told Elle magazine that it was "a difficult
and frightening experience" for her. Witherspoon and Phillippe's final
divorce documents were granted by the Los Angeles Superior Court on
October 5, 2007, ending their marriage.
Throughout 2007, there was persistent speculation in the mass media about
a romantic relationship between Witherspoon and her Rendition co-star Jake
Gyllenhaal. The pair denied the rumors while promoting Rendition in the
fall of 2007. However, after the finalization of Witherspoon's divorce in
October 2007, Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon became more open with their
relationship, particularly due to the release of paparazzi pictures that
showed the couple vacationing together in Rome. The couple has since been
regularly photographed together by paparazzi. In March 2008, Phillippe was
the first to confirm the relationship in interviews conducted during the
promotion of his latest film. Witherspoon personally confirmed her
relationship with Gyllenhaal in an interview for the November 2008 issue
of Vogue magazine, calling her boyfriend "very supportive". The couple was
reported to have split in November 2009, but the report was jointly denied
by Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal's publicists, who declared that "they are
still together." |
