Reese Witherspoon

Pride and Prejudice

Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon was born March 22, 1976, better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and film producer. Reese Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the movie The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower. In 1996, Witherspoon appeared in Freeway and followed that appearance with roles in three major 1998 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.

Reese 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.

In late 2004, Reese 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. After the final release date of Penelope was delayed twice, the movie eventually had 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. Witherspoon next 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.

With the exception of this animated role, Witherspoon did not appear in a live action film for two years following the release of Four Christmases. Witherspoon told Entertainment Weekly that the "break" was unplanned, stating that, "I just didn’t read anything I liked...There are a lot of really, really, really big movies about robots and things- and there’s not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie." Witherspoon returned with three films in late 2010 and 2011, all centered around Witherspoon as a woman caught in a love triangle between two men.

The first was James L. Brooks's romantic comedy How Do You Know, which starred Witherspoon as a thirty-something former national softball player who struggles to choose between a philandering baseball star boyfriend (Owen Wilson) and a business executive being investigated for white collar crime (Paul Rudd). The movie was filmed over the summer and fall of 2009 in Philadelphia and Washington, DC, and released on December 17, 2010. The movie was both a critical and box office failure. Despite an over $100 million budget, the film earned only $7.6 million in its opening weekend, leading the Los Angeles Times to call it "one of the year's biggest flops". The movie earned mainly negative reviews from critics, scoring 35% on Rotten Tomatoes with 111 reviews as of late December 2010.

Next up for Witherspoon was a second movie based on a love triangle, the upcoming film adaptation of the 1930s circus drama Water for Elephants. Witherspoon began circus training in March 2010 for her role as Marlena, a glamorous performer stuck in a marriage to a volatile husband (Christoph Waltz) but intrigued by the circus's new veterinarian (Robert Pattinson).^[86] Filming for the movie took place between late May and early August 2010,^[87][88] and it is scheduled for an April 2011 release. In September 2010, Witherspoon began principal photography in Vancouver for the third film, This Means War, a 20th Century Fox spy comedy directed by McG, in which Witherspoon stars as a woman at the center of a battle between two best friends (played by Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) who are both in love with her. The film is set for a 2011 release.

Witherspoon will then voice the role of Princess Mérida in Brave, a computer-animated 3-D film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, to be released in June 2012. It has also been announced that Witherspoon will produce (under the Type A banner) and star in both Pharm Girl, a film about a woman who takes on the pharmaceutical industry, and a Peggy Lee biopic to be directed by Nora Ephron.

Witherspoon's name has been attached to a number of other possible future films as well, including a Universal Pictures remake of the 1939 comedy Midnight, scripted by Michael Arndt, and the horror film Our Family Troubles, which she would produce through Type A with Jennifer Simpson, co-producer of Legally Blonde 2. Witherspoon is also rumoured to be taking on a role alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming film based on the history of Scientology, tentatively titled The Master. Witherspoon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 1, 2010 at 6262 Hollywood Blvd.