Her June swoon
Reese Witherspoon was nervous as a cat onstage singing June Carter Cash songs inWalk the Line Now the role has Oscar buzz for the ‘part-time’ actress with two young kids at home, writes Sean Daly
LOS ANGELES—
Reese Witherspoon got more than she bargained for when she asked the children of June Carter Cash for advice on playing their mother in the new musical biopic, Walk The Line.
“ I was informed upon meeting one of them that my boobs weren’t big enough!” Withersspoon remembers with a laugh. “ I ran immediately to the costume designer and was, like, ‘ I don’t think my boobs are big enough.’ He said, ‘ I think we’ll be okay.’ ”
Relaxing with reporters at the W Hotel, Witherspoon, 29, admits she also struggled with extreme stage fright when it came time to film the many musical sequences in the film, which opens Friday in theatres across North America.
“ They literally had to push me to get me up on the stage,” she reveals. “ I thought I was going to throw up the whole first day.” As always, the perky blond wife of actor Ryan Phillippe and mother of Ava, 6, and Deacon, 2, landed firmly on her feet. There’s already buzz about gold statues come February.
Could a career in music be far behind? The actress best known for her roles in the Legally Blonde movies and Sweet Home Alabama sang Carter’s vocals for the film and can carry a tune quite well.
“ I sing really loud in the car,” Witherspoon says. “ I accompany Lucinda Williams and Alison Krauss beautifully.” The music and love story of Cash ( played by Joaquin Phoenix) and Carter were nothing new to Witherspoon, who was born and raised in Nashville. Country music was even part of the curriculum for the future actor and her classmates at the exclusive Harpeth Hall school for girls.
“ The entire 4th grade play was about the history of country music,” she remembers. “The Carter family was in it. And I played (June’s) Mama Maybelle. So I knew a lot about Appalachian folk music and bluegrass.” Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon earned her first professional paycheque at age 7 in a TV commercial for a Nashville flower shop. At 14, the daughter of a doctor and a nurse answered an ad in her hometown newspaper looking for extras for a movie about first love called The Man in the Moon. She ended up in a principal role. But the plan had always been to follow her parents, Betty, now 56, and John, 62, into medicine. To that end, at 19 she enrolled
in pre- med courses at Stanford. “ I had the compassion element and the empathy element,” she says. “ But I didn’t have the tolerating the blood and the squeamishness thing.”
Luckily she had the acting chops. In the past five years, Witherspoon has made more than a dozen feature films — including Vanity Fair and The Importance of Being Earnest —
and now commands a salary of over $ 15 million ( U. S.) per movie.
She’s also a producer, with three features in the works. In 2006, she will oversee ( and have a cameo role in) Penelope, a fairy tale about a girl ( Christina Ricci) with a “ pig face.’’
It’s all part of a juggling act, Witherspoon says. She and Phillippe — her co- star from Cruel Intentions
and husband since 1999 — take turns at home; one works while the other stays with the kids. “ It actually works out very well,” she says. “ I am lucky. I have had a whole year off.” The couple met in 1997 at Witherspoon’s 21st birthday party and have been a magnet for paparazzi and gossip columnists ever since. But Witherspoon does her best to shrug off the unwanted attention and concentrate on being a successful wife and mother.
That means keeping an open mind — even if her kids want to one day follow her into show business.
“ I want them to be whatever they want to be,” she says with a smile. “ When they are 18.”