Reese Witherspoon wears Altuzarra dress, Jimmy Choo heels and Chopard ring, photographed by Alexi Lubomirski and styled by Samantha Traina for Harper's Bazaar
Far from the cliché of the all-American blonde, Reese Witherspoon is a sophisticated, intelligent star who revels in making tough choices, in work and in life.
Reese Witherspoon is doing what she does best: playing up for the camera. In this case, that means dancing to hip-hop on the Bazaar photo-shoot, dressed in an A-line Michael Kors skirt that jiggles about her like a starched crinoline. Here she goes again, dipping, bopping and shimmying. Watching her from the sidelines, I have to say she’s fantastically entertaining, her face a rolling cartoon strip of perky expressions. Photo-shoots don’t come easily to all actresses but Reese is, as you might expect, handling herself like a pro.
In keeping with the shoot’s vague premise – a 1950s Beverly Hills housewife going about her day – Witherspoon cranes her neck to look past the assembled crew here in the kitchen towards the front porch. Suddenly, she’s the picture of wifely anticipation, her ears pricked up as if her imaginary husband were just now pulling into the driveway and about to barrel through the door with a cheery ‘Honey, I’m home.’
It’s impressive to see and gratifying to have one’s expectations borne out. Because isn’t this the Witherspoon we know and love? Bright, breezy and boundlessly energetic, the seasoned crowd-pleaser who has been at it since the age of 14, the Southern gal with a gift for comedy. Yes, it is, to an extent. But getting the full measure of this 38-year-old, we’d better not reduce her to that. There is a cautionary tale being told here about Hollywood and the media, and Witherspoon is the one telling it. It goes something like this: ‘Don’t put me in that box. Or any box, for that matter. People are complex, on-screen and off. Can’t we do justice to that?’ It’s a word that comes up time and again in discussions with and about her: complex.
Reese wears Chloé dress and Chopard bracelet
Half an hour later, Witherspoon has changed into a dark top, black jeans and boots and is drifting across the lawn towards a pair of chairs set up near the pool. She looks tired. Who could blame her? It’s not just this shoot. The previous week she was off to London for the premiere of her new film, Wild, at the London Film Festival. The day before she was taking part in an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) charity walk in support of her former publicist Nanci Ryder, who was diagnosed with the condition. After this interview, she has to take her child to a doctor’s appointment, a parental duty you sense she would never farm out. (She has three children: Ava, 15, and Deacon, 11, with her first husband, the actor Ryan Philippe, and two-year-old Tennessee with her second, the Hollywood agent Jim Toth.) In short, life is busy. ‘Just recently, yeah,’ she says, sipping water from a fluorescent-yellow Sweaty Betty bottle. ‘I have a bunch of movies coming out.’
Indeed. There’s The Good Lie (a feelgood drama about a woman from Kansas City who rallies to help four Sudanese refugees) and Inherent Vice (based on the book by Thomas Pynchon and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, in which Witherspoon plays an assistant district attorney). But the film generating the most attention is Wild, based on the bestselling memoir by Cheryl Strayed. It tells the story of a solo hike Strayed took at the age of 26 along the Pacific Crest Trail, trekking 94 days through wilderness between Southern California and Oregon, often in extreme weather.
As Strayed recounts in the book, the physical hardships were constant (her toenails turned black and successively dropped off). But just as insistent were the emotional sorrows that compelled her to take the hike in the first place; the grief and despair prompted by the death of her mother from cancer, her own addiction to heroin and the breakdown of her marriage. In the end, the book is as much a meditation on how we bear the unbearable and find self-reconciliation as it is about the solace of books and poetry (Strayed is an avid reader). Nick Hornby, who adapted the memoir for film, says: ‘It burns with its need to communicate. It’s funny, incredibly painful and there is something extraordinarily winning about it. I understood the woman right from the first page.’
Witherspoon felt the same when she read the manuscript on a flight from LA to New York. ‘At the end of it,’ she says, ‘I was in a river of tears. I was so moved by Cheryl’s words. I didn’t know who this woman was but I had to call her.’ First thing the next day, she rang Strayed and told her: ‘I want to hug you. I feel like I know you. I feel like I went on this journey with you. I would love to option this book.’
But Witherspoon had one crucial question. ‘I said to her, “Do you want me to play this?”’ Strayed insisted she did, citing – among other things – Witherspoon’s goodness and authenticity, a hunch about the actress that turned out to be true. (‘From the moment I met her,’ Strayed reports in an email, ‘I felt like we could get in a car and drive across the country together and we’d have the time of our lives. She’s generous and so down to earth. You could introduce her to anyone and she’d be the most gracious and welcoming person in the world, no matter who it was.’)
Witherspoon, as the film’s co-producer, was in a position to cast herself. She jokes about this now, saying archly: ‘I felt my audition was spot-on.’ But with its scenes of promiscuity and drug-taking, the question remained: was Witherspoon the right person to play this part? ‘To be honest, if this was an open-casting project, I don’t know if anyone would have cast me,’ Witherspoon says. ‘I could be wrong. It’s nothing like any movie I’ve ever done – it was a way of challenging myself.’ Did she always see herself in the role? ‘Well,’ she says, thinking. ‘I definitely could. I just wanted to make sure [Cheryl] understood, no matter how the movie was going to get to the screen, it wasn’t about me having to be in it. If I’m not the right person to play the part, I need to know that. Ego is the death of all creativity.’
Reese wears Ralph Lauren gown and Cartier ring
Witherspoon had many reasons to option the book, some more personal than others. But one of its key messages chimed with her immediately. ‘This idea that we are our own saviours, our own heroes,’ she says, ‘that’s hard, but also incredibly uplifting. I think I realised, probably in my twenties, that there’s no going home, do you know what I’m saying?’ ‘In your twenties?’ I say, impressed by her maturity. She misconstrues, thinking this is old for such a realisation, and corrects herself. ‘Well, maybe when I was 18. I was like, “My parents can’t pay for me to have a life or go to college.” Whatever I was going to do in my life, I had to do it myself. Then when I had a little girl at 22, I was even more determined to, I don’t know... I went from just surviving to, “Who do I want to be for this other person?”’ That’s what happens when you have a child... ‘You kind of look inward.’ What about when you have three? ‘Your eyes cross,’ she says, faking a squint. ‘You look so far inward that your eyes cross. No,’ she goes on, laughing, ‘you’re just confused all the time.’
In 2012, Witherspoon joined forces with the Australian producer Bruna Papandrea (who had worked on Milk and All Good Things) to start their own production company, Pacific Standard. The decision was born of necessity, but also determination. Legally Blonde had already made Witherspoon a box-office draw. Walk the Line had won her an Oscar. But after a string of disappointing films – How Do You Know, Water for Elephants, This Means War – she was on the lookout for parts a good deal better than those being offered. In a series of meetings with studio executives, she happened to ask what they were developing with a female lead. ‘Except for one studio, they were developing nothing,’ Witherspoon says. ‘I was flabbergasted. So I said, “I’m just going to get busy.” When I see a problem, I redirect myself and put energy into fixing it.’
‘It impressed me,’ says Papandrea, who met her for lunch shortly afterwards, ‘that she didn’t want to build a company just for herself, but to create roles for other people and opportunities for film-makers. People are very quick to put you in a box in Hollywood. Reese and I talk about this all the time. Not just actors but writers, directors, producers. People think if you’ve done one thing, that’s what you do. I really believe that if someone is talented, they are up for so many challenges.’
Witherspoon faced a similar problem. ‘It wasn’t as if there was a lack of roles being offered to me. It was the dynamic aspect of playing a really interesting, complicated person that was not readily available. Honestly, I don’t know a woman who isn’t complicated. It’s strange that you don’t see many complicated women on film; complicated meaning complex, I should say.’ Cheryl Strayed’s book was the first one Witherspoon and Papandrea took on.
As it happens, Hornby had also read and loved the book and wondered about turning it into a film. When he found out Witherspoon owned the rights, he contacted her to ask if he could have a crack. The pair had met before, during the awards campaign for An Education, which Hornby had adapted from Lynn Barber’s memoir. Hornby recalls that meeting with fondness: ‘It was great, because I was at a party and talking to this producer I knew. Reese was sitting near us. The producer introduced us, at which point she stood up and hugged me. Then she said something I really wasn’t expecting. She said, “You wrote ‘NippleJesus’,” which is a short story I wrote for an anthology. It made me very curious, because she had to dig that story out. You couldn’t be tipped off by an assistant. I know now she reads a lot. I think it’s an enormous source of inspiration for her. And she remembers stuff in a way that always feels incredibly flattering. I know it’s not a very inspired way of describing someone, but she just feels extremely normal and human in a way that is beyond a lot of people who have had her career trajectory.’
Once they started talking about Wild, Hornby was reassured that they had the same film in mind, one that kept the drug abuse, the promiscuity and the nudity. ‘That was why she didn’t get a studio involved until the script was done and they were ready to shoot,’ says Hornby. ‘She didn’t want anyone to come in and say, “Reese Witherspoon can’t take heroin in a movie.”’ He goes on: ‘I think it’s proof, in a way, that if you don’t want to be put in a box, then do something about it. Because [Reese] optioned the book, committed to the role, and it might mean you earn less money than you’re used to, but if what’s important is the work, then you can control your own destiny and people’s perception of you.’
Subscribers' cover: Reese wears Fendi dress, Chopard earrings and Chanel Fine Jewellery ring
Then Jean-Marc Vallée got wind of the project. The Canadian had just directed Dallas Buyers Club (starring an Oscar-winning Matthew McConaughey, one of Witherspoon’s husband’s clients) with a naturalism and lack of sentimentality that Witherspoon was keen to replicate on Wild. Vallée loved the script and signed up. By this stage, Witherspoon had some inkling of the challenges that lay ahead, but it was only during rehearsals, as Vallée outlined his approach in detail, that she began to worry. At its most harmless, this meant no make-up or mirrors on set, and Witherspoon had to lug around a full backpack rather than one stuffed with newspaper, as she’d expected. At its worst, it resulted in some graphic scenes of sex and drug-taking. ‘There were small descriptions in the script,’ admits Witherspoon, ‘but when he started describing what we were going to do, that’s when I started to panic. I was like, “Wait. What are you talking about?”’ Later, she admits: ‘I would have fired myself a couple of times during rehearsals because I was so scared, oh my God. I got my shit together, but it took me a while.’
The drug scenes were hard enough. ‘I’ve never done drugs, so I was really confused. I didn’t know what I was doing. It just required being in a really raw emotional place that didn’t feel good.’ But the sex scenes were harder. ‘That’s, like, three per cent of the movie, but it took up a tremendous amount of fear in my mind because it’s daunting.’ How did she cope? ‘I never looked ahead at the schedule. I would wake up in the morning and say, “What are we doing today?” And I’d prepare on the way to work. Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft... “You can’t make me do it.”’
Did she ever think about backing out? ‘I think about backing out of everything. I get to the beginning and I’m like, “I do not want to make this movie.” I’ve never had an experience where I was like, “I can’t wait to start.” I don’t know why. It’s always going to require something that doesn’t feel good, some sort of challenge or emotional gutting. It’s not a fun space to live in a lot of the time. It’s why I enjoy doing comedies. It’s much easier, thinking of what rhymes with truck.’
There were some consolations. Papandrea used to joke that between the gruelling scenes and the gruelling weather, the only way to rebound was to make a comedy. And that’s what they did next, a Texas-based road-trip comedy starring Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, due out in May. Also, Gone Girl, Pacific Standard’s other inaugural project, had begun shooting on the same day over in Missouri. ‘Every day, it was so exciting,’ Papandrea recalls, ‘to be able to watch dailies of something that was happening across the country.’
There was also the author, who came on set for much of the filming. ‘At first I was nervous about her being there every day,’ says Witherspoon. ‘I was worried that I would do something wrong or she’d think I wasn’t performing or doing things the way she would have. But my nerves quickly dissipated and it became like I was channelling her; she was right there. It was actually helpful to ask her questions in real time.’ What did she say? ‘Every day this woman says things that touch my heart. It’s really hard to do interviews with her because she makes me cry a lot.’ Strayed is more specific. ‘I told her that the best things happen when we go outside the comfort zone. I told her I knew she could do it. I had total faith.’
Wild is, among other things, a beautiful mother-daughter love story. That’s a big part of the reason Witherspoon was drawn to it. When the film was completed, she and Laura Dern (who plays Cheryl’s mother, brilliantly) decided to watch it together with their mothers. ‘It was unequivocally one of the most important days of my life,’ Witherspoon says. ‘My mother’s mother had died when she was 50 and my mother was 20, so the movie covered a lot of similar ground. It was kind of her story, a girl trying to figure out her life after the death of her mother.’
After the screening, Witherspoon and her mother, who trained to be a paediatric nurse, went for lunch and talked in a way they never had. ‘These aren’t the kind of conversations you have at Thanksgiving, because everyone is busy.’ I ask whether they’d discussed her grandmother’s death before. ‘Not a lot. I remember being young, and my mother crying a lot. Whenever anyone brought her up, my mother would cry. We talked about what a beautiful woman she was but we never talked about what it was like for my mum at 20 to sit in a hospital room and watch her mother die. We never really had a conversation where I understood, until we started the film, which is crazy.
Reese Witherspoon in 'Wild'. Picture: Rex Features/FoxSearch
The day I shot the scene where Cheryl’s mother dies, I called my mum and said, “This is going to be hard, but I have to ask you some questions if that’s OK,” and she let me. I think it’s the first time she had any way of talking about that time in her life. I don’t know if anybody had ever asked her what it felt like.’ Then, after seeing the film, ‘she grabbed my hand and held it so hard. She knew that someone saw her side of it and how hard that was for her. And ultimately, that she found her way out of the wilderness of her grief and became the wonderful woman her mother always wanted her to be.’ She breaks off here. ‘If I keep talking about this I’m going to cry...’
At another point she sums the film up like this: ‘It’s one of those movies that bring up conversation. It’s a way to tell your mum that she is seen as who she is, separate from you.’
There is a scene from Walk the Line in which Witherspoon, as the country singer June Carter, wanders the aisles of a five-and-dime store in West Virginia. Out of the blue, the store manager, a woman, berates her for getting a divorce, which she calls ‘an abomination against God’. June is shaken, but polite. ‘I’m sorry I let you down, ma’am,’ she says, before edging away. The episode makes a good point: the public’s censure is rarely reasonable and a celebrity’s best recourse is often humility.
However one judges the events that took place in Atlanta in 2013, when Witherspoon’s husband was arrested for driving under the influence and she was charged with disorderly conduct for haranguing the arresting officer, it seems fair to say that in the aftermath, Witherspoon handled herself with grace. Her face clouds over when I mention it. Inevitably, I feel bad. She falls back on a series of remarks she has made before, that everyone makes mistakes, we’re all human, she never claimed to be perfect and all you can do is say sorry, learn and move on. But a week before, at the London Film Festival, she elaborated: ‘...it was a moment where I think people sort of realised I wasn’t exactly what they thought I was... We all like to define people by the ways the media presents them. If it shows I have a complexity that people didn’t know about, that’s part of human nature...’
The parallels start to draw themselves. Earlier, talking about Wild, she tells me: ‘Cheryl always says you should accept the things that happen to you; synthesise them, process them however you have to and own them because they’re part of the journey you’ve been on. Don’t be ashamed of experiences you’ve had. It’s a profound idea.’ She goes on: ‘We are so hard on ourselves. It’s part of human nature to wish you could have done better. Or have a conversation in a different way. Or handle a break-up in a different way. But there is something radical, which I got when I read Cheryl’s book for the first time, which is this: what if I forgive myself? What if we could just forgive ourselves?’ One wonders if our conception of Reese Witherspoon isn’t being changed and stretched for the better, if her choices over the past year haven’t made her, at least to us, more compelling. ‘I think [this film] will expand the way people perceive her,’ Strayed insists. ‘But the way they see her speaks more to the way we perceive young, blonde, beautiful women than it speaks to anything Reese has actually shown us. She’s played such a diversity of roles – she really hasn’t always been the all-American sweetheart – and yet somehow many decided she was that because of the way she looks, they boxed her in because she’s pretty. I always thought of her as a woman more complicated and intelligent than most give her credit for.’
Papandrea puts it another way: ‘We had to do a lot of work to convince people to get this movie made. Once they see it, they realise Reese is great. Of course she is, because she’s always been great.’
‘Wild’ is in cinemas nationwide on 16 January
This feature originally ran in the January 2015 issue of Harper's Bazaar, on newsstands 2 December 2014
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