She was born Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in New Orleans on the 22nd of March, 1976. Reese spent the first four years of her life in Wiesbaden, Germany where her father, John, was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves, there to fulfil his Vietnam draft obligation. After this, the Witherspoon family, John, wife Betty, first child John Jr and little Laura Jean returned to America to settle in Nashville. This was a predictable move for the Witherspoons, being deeply rooted in the South. Their earliest American ancestor, another John, had crossed the pond from Scotland, becoming President of the prestigious Princeton University. Such was his standing that he was asked to sign the original Declaration of Independence. Eventually the family migrated to the southern states, where they were a paragon of the region's genteel aristocracy. Many decades later, John, who graduated top of his class at Yale, would meet Betty while the pair were studying at the University of Tennessee. They later married, but their studies continued, John becoming a surgeon specialising in the ear, nose and throat, while Betty, who'd earn five separate degrees, would become a Ph.D in pediatric nursing, winding up as a professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University. Hailing from such stock, Laura Jean was bound to either hit the heights or crash and burn. Sensible from the start, she chose the former. At school, as a self-confessed "huge book dork", she achieved excellent grades, and attended the famous Harpeth Hall School For Girls in Nashville (former alumni including the Grand Ole Oprey's Minnie Pearl and pop singer Amy Grant). She'd be both a cheerleader and a debutante, though in later years she'd complain whenever this was mentioned, clearly believing that it undermined her reputation for intelligence and professionalism (her part in Legally Blonde would be close to her heart). Coming from such an academic family, and never having been considered exceptionally good-looking, she was always driven to achieve.This is the reason her parents nicknamed her Little Miss Type A. She might easily have followed her parents into medicine. But Nashville being a showbiz city, entertainment was always on the cards too. Her path was picked early, and as is so often the case, by fluke. When Laura Jean was just 7, the parents of a friend of hers decided to run an ad for their flower shop. Laura Jean was suggested as a model and chosen. Immediately, she was hooked, beginning acting lessons and forming dreams of movie stardom straight away. By 11, she was winning a 10 State Talent Award. |
At 14 she received her first pay packet, $38 for modelling back-to-school fashions in a local newspaper. She spent the money on a pair of black jeans her parents had denied her. Very soon, regular work was coming her way. She won TV ads for Ames and Opryland, and also came to the attention of movie casters. A film was to be shot locally, called Man In The Moon and directed by Robert Mulligan, famed helmsman of To Kill A Mockingbird, The Summer Of ’42 and The Other. Laura Jean’s friends were trying out as extras, so she went along, too, was given some lines to read, and so impressed were the casting directors that she was flown instantly to Los Angeles for a screen test. Within a month she was hired as the star of the film, and took her mother’s maiden name to lend weight to her cause. Reese Witherspoon was on her way. The Fifties-set Man In The Moon was a wonderful debut and Reese's performance was truly touching, and mature beyond all expectation, causing critic Roger Ebert to gush "Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I've ever seen in a movie". Tess Harper, who played Dani's (Reese's character) mother, later revealed that the cast had known Reese as Little Meryl. High praise indeed, given that the cast included the likes of the Oscar-nominated Sam Waterston. And it was no accident. Already clear on the kind of career she wanted and the kind of actress she wanted to be, Reese's influences did include Meryl Streep, along with Susan Sarandon, Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. This would be made even clearer by Reese's choice of roles in the future. |
What happened next was good, but it could have been even better. Word of Reese's talents spread quickly and she was invited to meet up with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, then casting for Cape Fear. Still very young, of course, she didn't know anything about them, but on the plane to her audition, having told the person in the next seat where she was going, she heard ALL about them, particularly the obsessive, brooding, brilliant De Niro. The experience made her so nervous she fluffed the audition, the part of Nick Nolte's sexually awakening daughter going to Juliette Lewis and launching her as one of the top new actresses of the Nineties. Nominated for a Young Artist Award, Reese did not want for alternative roles. Now faxing in her homework from her movie sets, she moved on to Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton. Once again, Reese was impressive, the film leading on to the TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child, directed by Andy Tennant (later to direct her first headlining smash hit Sweet Home Alabama). Here Reese played a youngster with leukaemia and in severe need of a bone marrow transplant. Her half-brother seems a likely donor, but his mother (Reese's stepmother), fearing for his life, refuses permission, sending the whole family into turmoil. It was heavy stuff, and all the more so for not being a major Hollywood production. Once more Reese was nominated for a Young Artist Award. On she went, continuing to vary her roles as wildly as she could. Next she was off to Africa for Disney's A Far Off Place, and afterwards came the charming but strange Jack The Bear. For her role Reese finally won that Young Artist Award for her part, the sweetness and drama hit especially high levels. The kids roles aside, the film was pretty miserable, and Reese moved rapidly on to Return To Lonesome Dove, a sequel to the classic miniseries Lonesome Dove. |
Reese found love at her 21st birthday party where she met actor Ryan Phillippe, who had just got his big break with Ridley Scott's White Squall. Ryan wasn't sure if he'd been invited, but had gone along anyway for the free beer. He and Reese talked deep into the night and the next morning he left Los Angeles to shoot the teen thriller I Know What You Did Last Summer. That could have been the end of things, just a brief and happy evening getting to know one another. But the two of them kept in contact by calling and writing. Ryan sent her his favourite book and Reese returned the compliment by sending hers - Graham Greene's The End Of The Affair. At the end of the shoot, she flew over to North Carolina to see him, panicked briefly over the speed of it all, then took off with him on a road trip. The couple married in June 1999, beside a river on a farm in Charleston, South Carolina. Three months later, Reese gave birth to their first child, daughter Ava Elizabeth Phillippe on September 9th.
|
1998 was a big year for Reese, her career began to go into overdrive but she continued to make sure that she varied her roles very carefully. First she worked alongside some real filmic heavyweights such as Paul Newman, Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon in Twilight. Next came Overnight Delivery where Reese plays Ivy Miller, a local stripper accompanying Wyatt Trips (Paul Rudd) across the country to intercept a letter he has sent to his girlfriend when he suspected her of cheating. Soon discovering that he was wrong, he has 24 hours to stop the package and prevent a disaster, but will he fall for Ivy (Reese) instead? After this came the weird and wonderful Pleasantville. This saw Reese getting down and dirty once more, as the sex-obsessed sister of Tobey Maguire. Like most of Reese's movies, Pleasantville was a hit with the critics. Her next effort, though, would be pointedly populist. Cruel Intentions, a teen adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, had Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Glenn Close role, betting Ryan Phillippe that he can't seduce prim and virginal Reese. The movie was slick, sexy and well produced but was very different for Reese. Not only was it a mainstream hit, but it also had her working with her husband-to-be, Ryan, for the first time. It proved quite a depressing experience. Filming the scene where Ryan's character breaks up with her, Ryan was off-camera, feeding her lines. Tired after numerous takes, he began to ad-lib, shouting phrases like "I never loved you! You're not attractive!" All of this was a little too much for Reese to handle. She freaked out, punched him in the face and screamed at him to get out, the brawl leaving her in tears and him out in the stairwell, vomiting uncontrollably. Naturally, director Roger Kumble loved it and asked them to do it again. Now came perhaps the most important film of her career, Election. This saw her as the central character in a major movie for the first time, carrying it with a superb performance as Tracy Flick, a high school princess determined to dominate the student council. It was a brilliant political satire, with absolutely everyone's position undermined by the grossest hypocrisy. It was no surprise that Reese was nominated for a Golden Globe. Reese's youthful looks helped out once again with Best Laid Plans. The movie was gritty fun, but nowhere near as out-there as Reese's next appearance, as Evelyn Williams, Christian Bale's materialistic, superficial fiancé in American Psycho. Despite American Psycho's notoriety and body count, it was a sharp feminist movie and extremely funny, to boot. Reese was proving herself to be a gifted comedienne, and continued the process with a cameo in Adam Sandlar's Little Nicky. Once again, Reese was highly amusing, giving the angel (her character) a painful Valley Girl accent perfect for such lines "He's (God's) so smart. Like, Jeopardy smart". She continue the comedy with a recurring role as Jennifer Aniston's little sister in Friends.
|
Now came Reese's first out-and-out headliner, Legally Blonde. A sorority queen, she's dumped by an East Coast snob for being too 'blonde', meaning she's not smart or sophisticated enough. He goes off to study Law at Harvard, and desperate to win him back, she follows, embarking on legal studies that see her face all manner of ridicule. Until, that is, she reveals the power of her mighty brain. Former debutante Reese was evidently making a point. The film was a money-maker, proof that Reese was one of the very few actresses who could lead a movie into profit. It also earned her a second Golden Globe nomination. But she wouldn't settle on her laurels. She took off for London and another challenge, playing the ever-so-proper Cecily in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's feast of wit The Importance Of Being Earnest. It was a daring move. Not only would she be verbally jousting with the thoroughly English Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, but also the brilliant newcomer Frances O'Connor as Gwendolyn, and the looming shadow of Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell. It was very Reese-like to take it on, though the choice was perhaps influenced by the fact that Ryan was also in London, filming Robert Altman's Gosford Park. Having chosen her scripts well, concentrated mostly on smaller, classier pictures, and successfully avoided publicity overkill, Reese had become a big star by stealth. It took everyone by surprise when her next headlining vehicle took over $35 million in its opening weekend, destrpying the record for September set by Rush Hour and beating Julia Roberts' Runaway Bride for the most successful rom-com opening ever.
| | Movies and the Paparazzi Wars
|
Reese's next movie was Sweet Home Alabama, the first movie shot in New York City after the September 11th attacks. It was a classy rom-com, and a deserved breakthrough for Reese. But this role may have never gone to Reese as the role of Melanie Smooter had originally been offered to Charlize Theron, who, fearing an imminent actors' strike, went for the ready-to-go Trapped instead. Reese was cast the same weekend that Legally Blonde opened and proved to be well worth her $5 million paycheck. But, $5 million is nothing compared to the $15 million she received for reprising her role as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White And Blonde. Her next project was very different, Mira Nair's take on Thackery's classic novel Vanity Fair. This earned her $15 million, the movie also saw her rise close to the top of the Hollywood tree, her pay cheque placing her behind only Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. So, by her mid-twenties, Reese had achieved worldwide fame, a celebrity husband (had her second child, son Deacon, in 2003), serious Hollywood weight and somewhat of a sex symbol. . Naturally, with her genteel southern reputation, she would feel obliged to give something back, setting up scholarships for the underprivileged back in Nashville. But it wasn't all happy news, her brother John, employed by Reese as a chauffeur and all-round help, was arrested and charged with a sex attack. Come 2005 Reese became heavily involved in a campaign against intrusive paparazzi who'd taken to blocking celebrities in with their cars and screaming abuse at them to gain a reaction. Reese naturally objected to this, especially when her children were involved, and resolved to highlight a problem that had caused serious problems for peers like Cameron Diaz, Lindsay Lohan and Scarlett Johansson, by bringing photographers to court. It was not easy, but with police help the resourceful and relentless Reese was eventually successful.
|
Aside from the war with the paparazzi, 2005 saw Reese back onscreen in two very different movies. First there was Just Like Heaven where she played a young doctor in San Francisco who, after a car crash, becomes a spirit and returns to her old apartment, now occupied by a bereaved and drunk Mark Ruffalo. Only he can see her and they gradually fall for each other as she tries to mend his life and he seeks a way to bring her back to corporeal form before it's too late. Naturally, there would be sizeable plot-holes, but with Reese and Ruffalo together it couldn't fail to be vastly charming. Walk The Line, James Mangold's biopic of Johnny Cash was a far more serious role for her. Following Joaquin Phoenix's Cash from Arkansas cotton farm to worldwide fame, it would explore all his traumas with death and drugs, Reese preventing it all from slipping into darkness with her scene-stealing performance as Cash's wife June, member of the legendary Carter family and, despite her youth, a professional of far greater experience than Cash. Both innocent and sassy, wholly at ease with her audiences and everyone else, she'd employ a cheery facade to ease Cash's pain and mask her own. Her efforts would win her a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and, a couple of weeks before her thirtieth birthday, that Best Actress Oscar.
| | Penelope and Private Life
|
Reese's next release saw her taking yet another step forward. This was Penelope, the first film produced by her Type A company, and saw Christina Ricci star as a little rich girl who's been cursed with a pig's snout and lives in luxurious seclusion. Reese had initially thought of taking the lead herself, but was too busy. She'd known Ricci from years of bumping into each other in audition waiting-rooms and, suspecting her former rival would be willing to take this kind of risk, was proved right. Though a low-budget release, and despite its charm, Penelope didn't make its money back at the US box office, an unusual set-back for Reese. But 2006 brought her far worse when it was announced that she and Ryan Phillippe were splitting up after seven years of marriage, the couple finally divorced in 2008. Things were changing for Reese, she had always maintained that, in person, she was very different from the characters she played, usually chipper types happily convinced of their own successful destiny. Still people looked at her seemingly perfect life and thought otherwise. Now holes had appeared in her life and, coincidentally, Reese's next feature would see her in a very different role, one where she'd be required to manifest bewilderment, confusion and isolation. This was the political thriller Rendition where Reese would be married to an Egyptian-American chemical engineer. In a move sadly typical of the times, he's suspected of involvement in terrorism, kidnapped by the US government and transported to a north African country where he's subjected to torture. Such testing subject matter would near-guarantee box office failure, but Rendition was a fine thriller with a strong message and took Reese far outside her comfort zone. It also placed Reese on a cast-list with Meryl Streep for the first time and brought her a new partner in Jake Gyllenhaal.
|
Having surprisingly failed in her attempt to win the lead in Clint Eastwood's Changeling, and taken time to get her private life in order, Reese didn't appear onscreen again until Christmas, 2008. This was in Four Christmases, where she and Vince Vaughn would play a couple forced to visit their families over the festive season. With all their parents divorced and remarried, this means four separate celebrations with redneck Robert Duvall, sex-hungry Mary Steenburgen, and a Sissy Spacek mooning over Vaughn's best friend. There'd also be a melodramatic encounter with Jon Voight that led many critics to accuse the film of unevenness as it moved between screwball comedy and drama, but Reese's popularity would ensure success, the movie moving past the $100 million mark yet again. Reese is now concentrating heavily on her family and her production company, she released no more movies until 2009's Monsters Vs Aliens, a Dreamworks animation where she lent her voice to a young Californian girl who's hit by a meteorite, turned into a monster and then, along with a bunch of other unfortunate creatures, ordered to save the world from alien attack. Reese will be appearing in a many more productions through the next few years.
|
 |
