Sex, drugs and out of control... meet the woman who made Hollywood star go wild
Reese Witherspoon on the very racy real-life story behind her new film
‘REAL women do curse. They sleep around, they use drugs, they do all sorts of different things and some of them are good mothers and some are bad mothers. They are multi-faceted.’
Surprising words, you might think, for the woman still best known as a ditzy law student in Legally Blonde. But then the latest Hollywood epic, Wild, is new territory for Reese Witherspoon.
Based on a best-selling 2012 book of the same name, the $47 million film is the remarkable story of how writer Cheryl Strayed set off on a 1,100-mile hike to ‘find herself’ after a bitter divorce and the death of her mother.
The book chronicles Strayed’s descent into heroin abuse, nights of casual sex – and how she ‘emotionally rebuilt’ herself during her epic journey.
The film is tipped to earn Witherspoon her second Oscar.
She says: ‘After Cheryl’s mother died, she was very self-destructive. She was married but she slept around. She had no respect for her husband and she had no respect for herself.
‘She was so angry and in such pain that she wanted to do anything to help herself feel alive – that included having sex with strangers, doing drugs, putting herself in dangerous situations.’
While the book and film closely guard the identity of the husband whose rejection prompted the marathon walk – both refer to him simply as ‘Paul’ – the Irish Mail on Sunday can today reveal that he is 48-year-old baker Marco Littig.
Littig, now a happily married father-of-two living in rural Missoula, Montana, walked out on Strayed after she admitted repeatedly cheating on him.
In his first ever interview about his famous former wife, he told the MoS that he held no grudges against her – but added that the painful disintegration of a marriage described in the book is all true.
He said Cheryl and her family ‘collapsed’ after her mother died.
‘We were just 21 when we married. We were much too young and we shouldn’t have got married,’ said Marco.
‘I was the administrator, the caretaker. It was after [her mother] died that Cheryl started seeing other guys. It was the catalyst for a lot of what followed,’ he explained.
‘She takes risks,’ he said of Cheryl. ‘She always took risks with her writing and she’s an incredibly intelligent person. She just fell into this deep hole. Her perception was true and strong.’
The last time Marco and Cheryl spoke was 16 years ago when she called up wondering if they could be friends again. He says he didn’t see the need.
Indeed, as the years went by, he was barely aware of Cheryl’s book.
‘My parents called and told me that Cheryl had written a book and that I was all over it. That was about six weeks after it had been published. I always figured that at some point in time I was going to end up somewhere in her writing.’
‘I’m OK with it,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a problem with what she’s written. It was all true. It was very gracious.’
The book was a New York Times bestseller and a selection for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.
Few outside his close family and friends know Marco is ‘Paul’. But his hopes of remaining one step ahead of the past faded once Reese Witherspoon signed on to star as his ex-wife in the Hollywood version of her story.
While Strayed, 46, has always refused to identify ‘Paul’, she spoke briefly about her guilt over the breakdown of their relationship in a recent interview saying: ‘It was just so, so ugly and painful.
‘I was tormented by it. I was devastated by the fact that I felt this deep need to leave the one person who was there for me.’
Witherspoon, 38, who both stars in and produces the new movie, admitted to the MoS that the role had been emotionally and physically tough.
‘Usually I can go in and out of a character, but this one was very difficult,’ she said. ‘I got quite angry and bitter and got into the “don’t give me any crap” attitude. After a while, my husband was like, “Whoa! Are you still Cheryl right now? Because you do not sound like yourself.” And he said, “OK… I love Cheryl, she’s amazing, but I am going to be really happy when this movie is over.”
‘I consider Cheryl a very dear friend now. But parts of her book were not easy to read and when we made the film I had to make the choice to tell all the parts, not just the ones that would make us like her, or it would just be a movie about a girl taking a walk.
‘And trust me, there were scenes in the movie that I did not want to do. There was one particular sex scene that I was dreading.
‘The day before, I was calling Cheryl saying: “I cannot believe I have to do that sex scene tomorrow.” She said, “Reese, I’m sorry I was such a slut in the Nineties.”
Witherspoon is convinced that how women are portrayed in films is changing. ‘Twenty years ago, I used to sit in meetings with studio heads and they’d say, “Well, this character mustn’t curse. That’s really not very likeable.”
‘We don’t have that idea of what a woman is any more: Is she good or is she bad? It’s much more complex. I have had my own set of problems in life, some of which people know about and some people don’t.
‘But what I have learned from them is that there are times when you realise that no one is coming in to save you. You have to save yourself. No mother or father or relationship or baby is going to fix your problems. You have to find the inner strength to look after yourself.’
The film didn’t just take an emotional toll.
‘In most movies where you carry a backpack, it’s just filled with news- paper but this one was really heavy,’ she laughed. ‘Plus, the first few days were really cold and I had to wear shorts and a T-shirt and they had to spray me with water to look like I was sweating – and all the while, the guys on the other side of the camera were in hats and parkas and looking cosy while I was walking along pretending not to be shivering.
‘About three days into the shoot, my shoulders hurt so bad and were so sore and I was freezing cold, and I called my husband and was sobbing, “Oh, this movie is so hard! It’s so cold!” He said, “OK, honey, when you option a book called Wild about a woman who hikes 1,000 miles through the wilderness by herself… did you think it was going to be a super-easy, fun shoot?”
‘I said, “I know, shut up.” ’