Facts
Reese Witherspoon went from Southern debutante
to a driven Hollywood hot ticket after getting
her start in the 1991 feature The Man in the Moon.
Cast thanks to a 10-state talent search, the
inexperienced actress had only local
commercials to her credit, but she gave a
shining performance on her first time out,
playing with heartbreaking poignancy a fourteen-year-old girl
in love with the boy-next-door dating her sister.
It was immediately apparent from her performance that the newcomer could handle three-dimensional, passionate characters with both manners and moxie.
That same year Witherspoon made her TV acting debut
in the
Diane
Keaton-directed cable movie Wildflower
(Lifetime, 1991), playing a girl who discovers
an epileptic teenager (Patricia Arquette)
held captive by her father. Witherspoon
racked up more television credits as a
critically ill young woman in Desperate Choices:
To Save My Child (NBC, 1992) and a
young wife with a wandering eye in
the miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove
(CBS, 1993). That same year she evaded
murderous poachers as the
star of A Far Off Place, a
teen-aimed Disney
adventure filmed in the Kalahari Desert.
Though she had always projected an
aura of sexuality, Witherspoon delivered
a breakthrough turn as a sensitive and sassy
hostage in the controversial Gen-X
satire S.F.W. (1995) which signaled her move
toward more risky, complex roles. She was
stalked by a pre-Boogie Nights Mark Wahlberg
in James Foley's Fear, and kissed her nice girl
image good-bye in Freeway (both 1996)
as a gun-toting, illiterate, trash-mouthed
juvenile delinquent, snarling and
pouting her way through a
modern-day Little Red Riding Hood.
(The film debuted on HBO
before receiving a limited theatrical release.)
Developing a varied and rewarding career
seemed to come naturally to the young actress, who
shied away from typical teen roles
and avoided being stereotyped. After she
portrayed the wayward
daughter of Susan Sarandon
and Gene Hackman in Twilight, her
kewpie-doll prettiness and pert
demeanor found its way
into Gary Ross' Pleasantville (both 1998), as
the 90s hoyden introducing a bold
new life force to the 1950s
black-and-white world, changing
it irrevocably.
She continued her march to stardom with
turns in three 1999 releases:
as Alessandro Nivola's lover
who plot
together to escape from their
desolate town in Best Laid Plans,
opposite Matthew Broderick
in the darkly satiric Election
and playing the plucky but
virginal Annette in
Cruel Intentions, a spin
on Les Liaisons Dangereuses set amongst the teen set.
While the better-than-average Cruel Intentions
would see a larger audience and showcase
Witherspoon's versatility, critics'
favorite Election
would really set her apart from other
performers of her generation.
Playing the fiercely ambitious
and preternaturally perky class
president candidate Tracey Flick,
Witherspoon
essayed a whole new kind of
villain, a seemingly harmless teenager
so unflinchingly focused on her goal that anything and anyone in the way is justifiably destroyed. Funny and frankly terrifying, Witherspoon's
portrayal of the character took Alexander Payne's
black comedy to its highest level. A guest role as
Rachel's younger sister on
the hit sitcom Friends (NBC)
raised her profile even further in 2000, a
year that saw the young star otherwise
busy with marriage and the birth of her first child.
In 2001, Witherspoon returned
to the big screen, leading the
charming comedy Legally Blonde
to the number one box office spot. This cute tale of a
spirited fashion major from Malibu-cum-Harvard Law student became
a surprise hit due in no small part to her
irresistible and playful but heartfelt
performance. She was tapped to play
Cecily Cardew in the somewhat lackluster
2002 film remake of Oscar Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest and would move into the realm of producing with projects in development including a feature adaptation of the
best-selling novel The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.
First Witherspoon returned in a movie
close to her heart, the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama
(2002) about a southern girl who, after
transforming herself into a New York socialite,
has second thoughts about her true self during
a trip back home. The following year, Witherspoon
starred and executive
produced the sequel Legally Blonde: Red, White and Blonde
(2003), a lesser version of the original that took the beloved
character Elle Woods to Washington D.C to
battle to pass a law--the film was
endurable solely thanks to Witherspoon's charms.
The actress wisely took a hiatus
from forulamic comedies and took
on the role of the aspiring
elitist Becky Sharp in director Mira Nair's
stylish adapatation of William Makepeace Thackeray's
classic novel Vanity Fair (2004),
playing a character that uses all of her
charm, wit, guile and sensuality to climb
the ranks of British society. The actress'
innate likability and relatively sympathetic
portrayal of the ladder-climbing Becky
resulted in a sympathetic, more determined, less calculating interpretation than other big and small screen versions of the character.
Witherspoon's potent on-screen charisma
helped fuel her next effort, the more
conventional Just Like Heaven (2005),
a romantic comedy with a Ghost-like plot in
which she plays a workaholic doctor who finds
herself in an ethereal state haunting her
home after it's leased to a depressed
widower (Mark Ruffalo). Though falling somewhat short on
laughs and originality, the film benefitted from its
appealing leads and scene-stealing supporting players,
and its eventually-involving love story.
Next the
actress was on to a project that
offered a greater acting challenge,
playing country singer June Carter Cash
opposite Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash
in director James Mangold's biopic
Walk the Line (2005). Witherspoon
was at her best in the role, set within the singers' tortured road to romance, which also required her to convincingly perform
her own songs (in Carter's signature country twang),
play the autoharp and deliver Carter's
trademark wisecracks and one-liners.
Off-screen Witherspoon was at the
center of media and lawmaker attention on
issues involving paparazzi in 2005 after
she was harassed and detained by
the agressive shutterbugs; the actress failed in
her attempt to bring charges against a photographer
who she claimed followed her home from a gym visit
and boxed in her car and prevented her from
entering the gates of her Brentwood home
in April 2005, but as a result of a second
incident in September of that year another
photographer was charged with six
misdemeanor counts, including
battery (for allegedly shoving a five-year-old child
and hitting another on the head with his camera),
child endangerment and false imprisonment
stemming from his dogged attempts to
snap shots of Witherspoon and her
daughter Ava at the younster's sixth
birthday outing at Disney's California
Adventure theme park. The Witherspoon
incidents along with other high-profile
paparazzi mishaps that year involving
such stars as Lindsay Lohan
prompted California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
and other legislators to consider tougher
laws governing paparazzi behavior.
