It’s been two years since Reese Witherspoon, who won a Best Actress Oscar in 2006 for Walk the Line, has graced a movie, unless you count her voicing a nearly 50-foot-tall animated woman in Monsters vs. Aliens. But while moviegoers may feel like she’s been away for a while, Witherspoon has shot three movies that will hit theaters over the next year. In How Do You Know (rated PG-13, opening Dec. 17), she’s an Olympic-caliber softball player whose career has hit a wall and who finds herself caught romantically between a rakish star pitcher (Owen Wilson) and a broke businessman (Paul Rudd). It’s a role that calls on both her dramatic skills and comedy chops, says writer-director James L. Brooks: “The fact that she’s a world-class actress with that kind of comedic talent—she’s for real.” Next year Witherspoon will star in the period romance Water for Elephants and the action comedy This Means War. Meanwhile, off screen, the 34-year-old actress, who split from actor Ryan Phillippe in 2006 after seven years of marriage, has been raising their two kids—Ava, 11, and Deacon, 7—and, recently, dating agent Jim Toth, a relationship that has sparked breathless engagement rumors. So, yeah, there’s a lot to talk about.
Read the full interview here!
EW: It’s been two years since audiences have seen you on screen. Did you plan to take a break?
Witherspoon: [Shrugs] I don’t know what happened. I just didn’t read anything I liked. And I think if you don’t work for a while, you get a little, like, stuck. It was particularly hard around the writers’ strike. But it feels different now, too. The movies that are being made feel different. There are a lot of really, really, really big movies about robots and things—and there’s not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie. I’ve never done the giant robot movie. Never done the superhero movie. That doesn’t interest me too much. But you know, I also have kids, so when I’m not working, it’s not like I’m sitting around doing nothing. I’m taking care of two kids who are rapidly growing up in some bizarre time warp. I mean, somehow I now have an 11-year-old. [Laughs]
EW: I imagine that as your kids have gotten older, their perspective on what you do for a living has changed.
Witherspoon: Their ideas are very sophisticated. They know the difference between being an actor and being a celebrity. There’s just so much information that’s readily available now—and so much more criticism. Ava said to me the other day, “Why are people always tearing celebrities down?” I thought that was a really interesting question—and I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what it is about our culture that we want to devour celebrities. We’ve had to stop watching some of the morning shows because there’s so much gossipy stuff on them. So now we’re watching SportsCenter in the morning—and that’s gotten so bad. We tear those poor athletes apart!
EW: You came up in the business when all of this was a lot less intense. There weren’t countless gossip blogs and 24/7 paparazzi yet. Looking back, do you feel grateful for that?
Witherspoon: God, I wish I would have known—I would have done more bad s—! [Laughs]
EW: Instead, you got married young and started having kids.
Witherspoon: I know. [Pauses] I was followed all day today. It kind of reminds me of that cartoon— remember the cartoon with the sheepdog and the wolf, and at the end of each day they clocked out? “See you tomorrow, Ralph.” “All right, Sam.” [After taking pictures] they’ll say, “Thanks,” and I’ll say, “Be safe. Don’t kill anyone with your car today.” It’s like Stockholm syndrome.
EW: Amid all that public scrutiny, you had to go through something that was intensely personal.
Witherspoon: Which thing are you referring to? There’ve been so many. [Laughs]
EW: It’s spelled D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Witherspoon: [Sings with a Tammy Wynette twang] “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”
Posted Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at 8:08am
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