REESE’S POWER PLAY
She’s over hiding her ambition
Once upon a time, there used to be only one queen of Hollywood – and her name was Oprah Winfrey.
But these days, the crown seems to have well and truly passed to her younger contemporary and close friend Reese Witherspoon.
Successful actress, talk-show host, author, book-club creator, producer, businesswoman... Sound familiar?
Since storming into Hollywood’s consciousness with a supporting role in Cruel Intentions, before cementing her place as a force to be reckoned with thanks to her turns in films such as Legally Blonde and Walk the Line, for which she won an Oscar, Reese’s star has risen dramatically.
From founding multiple companies through to her impressive network of famous girlfriends – think Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Beyoncé and Kerry Washington – there is noone who wields more influence in Tinseltown, and Reese (43) says she’s all too aware of the power she now holds. But she’s not apologising for it.
“I know I’m good at things,” she says. “And I’m over being bashful about it. Do basketball players have to sit there and act coy? Tell me something: Does [basketball legend] LeBron James twiddle his thumbs and say, ‘Jeez, I’m kind of great at shooting, and I guess I’m okay at dribbling and passing’?
No, he’s like, ‘I’m amazing, I rock!’ I wish more actresses had that kind of bravado.
“I was never going to be an actor who lives in their car because their dream was so big,” she continues.
“[If it didn’t work] I would have gone from Stanford to medical school and become a surgeon. Right now I’d probably be the premier surgeon and paediatric cardiologist at Vanderbilt University…
What?” she adds, defiantly.
“I’m just being honest. I’m ambitious, and I’m over hiding that.”
Reframing the word “ambition”, as well as producing films with strong female-led plotlines, is now at the core of everything Reese does, though she says it took a while for Hollywood to take her production company Hello Sunshine seriously – despite the huge successes of films Wild and Gone Girl. It wasn’t until the runaway success of miniseries Big Little Lies that she won respect and acceptance.
“I wasn’t offered opportunities to grow my company until I got that third hit,” she says. “A guy has one hit at Sundance, and he gets Jurassic World.”
Reese has been personally and professionally inspired by her fabulous friends. She recalls watching six of her favourite actresses “fighting over a crappy part” in a movie, and realising it would continue unless someone did something.
“We women are too talented to be fighting over roles like this,” she says emphatically.
That moment inspired her to purchase the rights to Aussie writer Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies – and the resulting two seasons of the TV show have been among the biggest hits of her career.
But it’s the friendships she’s developed along the way that Reese says are her greatest triumphs. The star is famously close with her The Morning Show co-star Jennifer Aniston, since they became friends after Reese guest-starred in Friends
in 1998. She’s equally close to Nicole Kidman – they even own neighbouring holiday houses – and is about to star alongside Scandal actress Kerry Washington in Little Fires Everywhere.
And then there’s Oprah –
the woman Reese credits with inspiring her on her journey to becoming so much more than “just an actress”.
“I had the extraordinary opportunity to work with her in [2017], when we filmed
A Wrinkle in Time in New Zealand,” says Reese.
“She’s done over 34,000 interviews with people, so I would say to her, ‘What do people want? What is the one connective tissue of humanity and people you have met?’
“And she said, ‘People just want to be seen. They want to be acknowledged and they want to know they are understood.’ I thought that was really beautiful and so poignant.”
Along with her Southern-style clothing line Draper James, her upcoming series with Kerry and her work as a founding member of the Time’s Up movement, Reese has one other exciting project in the works – a third Legally Blonde film.
“So many people have come up to me to tell me they went to law school because of Elle Woods,” Reese says of her breakthrough role. “And I just think that’s fantastic.”