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I’ve only seen Reese in one movie, Walk the Line, and totally loved her. Her chin is a little scary, and I think actually she might have a twin in there? You know, like the lady from My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
Anyway, EW did a good article on Reese “There’s Something In There” Witherspoon, check it out:
Legend has it Marlene Dietrich was banned from this restaurant for wearing pants. Humphrey Bogart used to eat here too — not to mention drink — along with Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Faye Dunaway, and just about every other A-list actor of the last 60 years. And now, on a balmy August afternoon, Reese Witherspoon (wearing a skirt, naturally) takes her place inside this sanctum sanctorum of the Hollywood elite, slipping into a corner booth at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. ”Isn’t it great?” she gushes as a waiter rushes over to fluff her napkin and pour iced tea. ”It reminds me of where I grew up in Nashville — the way nothing about it ever changes.” She glances around to take in the splendor. ”They did switch the tablecloths once,” she adds sourly. ”That sort of bothered me.”
For someone who doesn’t like changes, Witherspoon’s undergone some big ones over the past couple of years, since picking up that Best Actress trophy for her turn as June Carter in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. For starters, there was the divorce from actor Ryan Phillippe, her husband of more than seven years — plus a rumored romance with a recent costar, and the inevitable tabloid scrutiny that comes from being hot and single in Hollywood (the new bangs haven’t hurt either). More to the point, there’s also been a major career reboot, with a slate of upcoming roles that could solidify Witherspoon, 31, as the most bankable actress in Hollywood. This October, for instance, she’ll star in Rendition, a sober political drama about a pregnant Midwestern woman who discovers that her Egyptian husband (Omar Metwally) is being secretly held by the U.S. government. (Jake Gyllenhaal plays the rookie CIA agent overseeing the interrogation, and Meryl Streep the official who orders the covert abduction.)
”It doesn’t smash people over the head with a message — you’re not even sure if the husband is innocent or guilty — which is one of the reasons I wanted to do it,” Witherspoon says. ”It represents different cultures in a real human way.”
In other words, it’s precisely the sort of complex, dramatic gig Witherspoon was rarely getting offered just a couple of years ago, when she was still considered mainly a comedic commodity (thanks to her Legally Blonde movies, which together grossed $267 million worldwide). But times, like tablecloths, change. With Julia Roberts now in semi-retirement and Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock in their 40s, Witherspoon is pretty much the only leading lady in her 30s with any measurable mass appeal. Certainly, among the actresses of her generation — Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet — she’s the only one with both a hugely successful comedy franchise on her résumé and a golden man on her mantel. ”Nobody else has her range,” says Mark Waters, who directed Witherspoon in her last comedy, 2005′s Just Like Heaven. ”Those other actresses are great, but you can’t see them doing pratfalls. Reese can win an Oscar and do a pratfall.”
Witherspoon is still making comedies; this winter, she’ll team with Vince Vaughn on Four Christmases, a Meet the Fockers-style farce about a couple trying to spend the holidays at each of their divorced parents’ separate homes. But nowadays she’s also steering her career toward genres — and paychecks — nobody would have imagined before she snagged that statuette for Walk the Line. Next year, for instance, she’s slated to make her first horror movie, Our Family Trouble, for which she’ll reportedly be paid the staggering salary of $29 million. That’s more than even Roberts has ever earned.
But for now she’s focused on the serious stuff. Part Syriana, part A Mighty Heart, Rendition tackles the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition, in which the U.S. government kidnaps suspected terrorists and flies them to other countries to be tortured for information. ”I read about it when it first [leaked out], and it just seemed there should be a movie about it,” says co-producer Mark Martin, who admits he was initially ”thinking Cate Blanchett” for the lead. But Steve Golin (Babel), who would become one of his producing partners, saw Reese in the role right away. ”The movie is about somebody you love disappearing,” he explains. ”And Reese is such a beloved actress — she’s such a girl-next-door type, only more beautiful — it makes what she goes through even more relatable.”
As it happens, Witherspoon is descended from a real-life political rabble-rouser: one of her ancestors was John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. But as for her own ideological opinions, even on the subject of extraordinary rendition, not even the most brutal celebrity-interview interrogation techniques can make her talk. ”Actors have this influence — people ask about our clothes and things like that,” she says. ”I don’t want my politics to become part of that. It’s personal to me.” You can guess how chatty she gets when the conversation turns to her divorce from Phillippe (the couple now share custody of their two children, Ava and Deacon). Or what she has to say about those paparazzi shots showing her and Gyllenhaal seemingly getting friendly in a parking lot.
Cue sounds of silverware clinking.
”To this day, I genuinely don’t know if they had a relationship,” offers Rendition director Gavin Hood, who first met Witherspoon at the 2006 Academy Awards (the South African filmmaker was picking up a statue of his own, for Tsotsi). ”But I can promise you that Reese and Jake were never together on the set. All of Jake’s scenes took place in Morocco and all Reese’s in L.A. The only time they crossed paths — when the paparazzi caught them — was on the way into a wardrobe fitting. Maybe some chemistry happened as they passed in the parking lot that day — I don’t know. All I can say is that she was absolutely focused when it came to making the movie.”
Discipline has never been a problem for Witherspoon. This, after all, is an actress who named her own company Type A Productions. (”Sometimes I wish I had called it Breezy Pictures,” she grumbles when asked about it.) ”You meet a lot of people who have lists of things they say they’re going to do,” notes Peter Sarsgaard, who costars in Rendition as an old flame trying to help Witherspoon’s character. ”But Reese doesn’t just make the list. She actually does what’s on it. That you don’t see very often.”
”I’ve been to those marketing meetings where they talk about your approval ratings, who likes you and who doesn’t,” Witherspoon says, pinching her forehead at the memory. ”But I don’t pay them much attention. The way I choose things is not that studied. I just try to make films that make me feel good.” As lunch plates are removed, Witherspoon opens up a fraction more. ”Honestly,” she says, ”nothing has really changed. I still feel like I did when I first left my parents’ house. I’m still not sure what I can afford. I still call up my accountant if I want to rent a beach house for a weekend. I’ll call and ask him, ‘Can I afford that?”’
Yeah, she can afford that. In fact, at this point in her career, she can afford to do pretty much anything she wants in Hollywood. She might even get away with wearing pants to the Polo Lounge.
