Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born March 22, 1976)
The life cycle 3 6
Important years of life
1992 3
1995 6
2001 3
2004 6
2010 3
2013 6
2019 3
2022 6
2028 3
2031 6
2037 3
2040 6
2046 3
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In 1992, Witherspoon appeared in the TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child
Witherspoon’s breakthrough role was playing Elle Woods in the 2001 film Legally Blonde, for which she received her second Golden Globe nomination.
The 2001 film Legally Blonde marked a turning point in Witherspoon’s career; she starred as Elle Woods, a fashion-merchandising major who decides to become a law student in order to follow her ex-boyfriend to Harvard Law School. Witherspoon said about the role, “When I read Legally Blonde, I was like, ‘She’s from Beverly Hills, she’s rich, she’s in a sorority. She has a great boyfriend. Oh yeah, she gets dumped. Who cares? I still hate her.’ So we had to make sure she was the kind of person you just can’t hate.”Legally Blonde was a box-office hit, grossing US$96 million domestically.Witherspoon’s performance earned her praise from critics as the press began referring to her as “the new Meg Ryan”. Roger Ebert commented, “Witherspoon effortlessly animated this material with sunshine and quick wit”, and Salon.com noted that “she [Witherspoon] delineates Elle’s character beautifully”. Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concluded, “Witherspoon is a talented comedian who can perk up a scene just by marching in full of pep and drive and she powers this modest little comedy almost single-handedly. For her work, Witherspoon garnered her second Golden Globe Best Actress nomination and an MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance.
Witherspoon hosted Saturday Night Live on September 29, 2001, the first episode to air after the September 11 attacks.
In 2004, Witherspoon starred in Vanity Fair, adapted from the 19th-century classic novel Vanity Fair and directed by Mira Nair. Her character, Becky Sharp, is a poor woman with a ruthless determination to find fortune and establish herself a position in society. Witherspoon was carefully costumed to conceal that during the filming she was pregnant with her second child.
In late 2004, Witherspoon began working alongside Mark Ruffalo on the romantic comedy Just Like Heaven. Her character, Elizabeth Masterson, is an ambitious young doctor who gets into a car accident on her way to a blind date and is left in a coma; her spirit returns to her old apartment where she later finds true love.
She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.
In 2003, Witherspoon followed up the success of Legally Blonde by starring in the sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. Elle Woods has become a Harvard-educated lawyer who is determined to protect animals from cosmetics-industry science tests. The sequel was not as financially successful as the first film and it generated mostly negative reviews. USA Today considered the movie “plodding, unfunny and almost cringe-worthy”, but also noted that “Reese Witherspoon still does a fine job portraying the fair-haired lovable brainiac, but her top-notch comic timing is wasted on the humorless dialogue.”Meanwhile, Salon.com concluded that the sequel “calcifies everything that was enjoyable about the first movie”. Despite being panned by critics, the sequel took in over $39 million in its first five days in the U.S. box office charts and eventually grossed $90 million in the US. Witherspoon received a $15 million paycheck for the role—a starting point to make her consistently one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses from 2002 until 2010.
Witherspoon returned with three films released in 2010, 2011 and 2012, all centered on her as a woman caught in a love triangle between two men. In a 2012 interview with MTV, Witherspoon jokingly referred to this trio of films as her “love triangle period”.
The first film was James L. Brooks’ romantic comedy How Do You Know which starred Witherspoon as a former national softball player who struggles to choose between a baseball-star boyfriend (Owen Wilson) and a business executive being investigated for white-collar crime (Paul Rudd). The movie was filmed in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. during the summer and fall of 2009 and released on December 17, 2010. The movie was both a critical and box office failure. Despite a budget of more than $100 million the film earned only $7.6 million in its opening weekend, leading the Los Angeles Times to call it “one of the year’s biggest flops”. The movie earned mainly negative reviews from critics, scoring 35% on Rotten Tomatoes with 111 reviews as of late December 2010.
Witherspoon’s second love-triangle movie was the film adaptation of the 1930s circus drama Water for Elephants. She began circus training in March 2010 for her role as Marlena, a glamorous performer stuck in a marriage to a volatile husband (Christoph Waltz) but intrigued by the circus’s new veterinarian (Robert Pattinson). The movie was filmed between late May and early August 2010 in various locations in Tennessee, Georgia, and California. It was released on April 22, 2011 and received mixed critical reviews.
In September 2010, Witherspoon began principal photography in Vancouver for the third and final love-triangle film, This Means War, a 20th Century Fox spy comedy directed by McG in which Witherspoon’s character is at the center of a battle between best friends (played by Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) who are both in love with her. The film had a “sneak-peek” release on Valentine’s Day, before fully opening on February 17, 2012.
On December 1, 2010, Witherspoon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6262 Hollywood Blvd
In early February 2010, it was reported that Witherspoon had begun dating Jim Toth,a talent agent and co-head of motion picture talent at the Creative Artists Agency, where Witherspoon is a client. Witherspoon and Toth announced their engagement in December 2010, and married on March 26, 2011 in Ojai, California, at Libbey Ranch, Witherspoon’s country estate (which she since has sold). The couple have a son, born in 2012
2013–present: Career comeback and production work
Witherspoon’s subsequent films signaled a departure from the love-triangle theme. In September 2011, a year after beginning work on This Means War, she filmed a small role in Jeff Nichols’s coming-of-age drama Mud in Arkansas, playing Juniper, the former girlfriend of a fugitive (Matthew McConaughey), who enlists two local boys to help him evade capture and rekindle his romance with her. Mud premiered in May 2012 in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but did not win. Following its American debut at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2013, the film had a limited release in select North American theaters on April 26, 2013.
Witherspoon next starred in Devil’s Knot, which is based on Atom Egoyan’s true crime book of the same name and examines the controversial case of the West Memphis Three. Like Mud, the film is set in Arkansas. Witherspoon played Pam Hobbs, the mother of one of three young murder victims. In an interview subsequent to her casting in the film, Egoyan noted that although the role requires “an emotionally loaded journey”, he “met with Reese, and… talked at length about the project, and she’s eager to take on the challenge”. The movie was shot in Georgia in June and July 2012. Witherspoon was pregnant with her third child during filming. The film’s world premiere was held on September 8, 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In April 2013, Witherspoon began production in Atlanta on Canadian director Philippe Falardeau’s film The Good Lie. It is based on real-life events, about a brash American woman assigned to help four young Sudanese refugees (known as Lost Boys of Sudan) who win a lottery for relocation to the U.S. It was released on October 3, 2014
Witherspoon shot a small role in Inherent Vice (2014), an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, in Pasadena, California in summer 2013.Through her company Pacific Standard, Witherspoon served as a producer in the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl, though she did not star. Indeed, Witherspoon and her producing partner “had little to do with the production of Gone Girl”, leaving it to director David Fincher while focusing their efforts on another adaptation produced via Pacific Standard, that of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, which began production in fall 2013 on the same day as Gone Girl
In 2013, Witherspoon recorded a cover of the classic Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra duet, “Somethin’ Stupid” with Michael Bublé for his 2013 album, To Be Loved.
In 2007, she was selected by People and the entertainment news program Access Hollywood as one of the year’s best-dressed female stars. The yellow dress she wore to that year’s Golden Globe Awards was widely acclaimed. A study conducted by E-Poll Market Research showed that Witherspoon was the most likable female celebrity of 2007. That same year, Witherspoon established herself as the highest-paid actress in the American film industry, earning $15 to $20 million per film.
In June 2013, Witherspoon filed suit against Marketing Advantages International Inc., claiming it used her name and image extensively in jewelry advertising without her permission, both throughout the United States and internationally.
Early in the morning of April 19, 2013, while in Atlanta, Georgia filming The Good Lie, Witherspoon and Toth were pulled over after the car in which they were traveling was seen weaving across a double line on Peachtree Street.Toth, who was driving, was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.139 and was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and failing to maintain a lane. Witherspoon was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for disobeying the arresting officer’s instructions to remain in the vehicle and arguing with him, asking if he knew who she was.Witherspoon pleaded no contest and was fined $313, including court costs
In 2016, she had a voice role in the animated film Sing, as well as serving as a major performer on the film’s soundtrack. The movie became Witherspoon’s biggest hit, being the first to make over $200 million domestically and $500 million worldwide
In January 2016, Witherspoon began filming her first television project since Return To Lonesome Dove, the seven-part miniseries adaptation of the Liane Moriarty bestseller, Big Little Lies. She produced the miniseries, along with her co-star, Nicole Kidman, and the show’s director, Jean-Marc Vallée, her second project under his direction. The series premiered on February 19, 2017 on HBO and finished on April 2
In November 2016, Witherspoon began production on the romantic comedy Home Again, the directorial debut of filmmaker Nancy Meyers’ daughter, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, which was released on September 8, 2017
In 2016, Witherspoon and Papandrea split up, with Witherspoon gaining full control over the company
In October 2016, Witherspoon announced that she would be writing her first book
In November 2016, Witherspoon and Otter Media formed Hello Sunshine, a joint venture focused on telling female-driven stories on film, TV and digital platforms
2019….