The movies Reese Witherspoon is “not meant to be doing”, according to Reese Witherspoon
For actors getting their start in the industry, you often have to take whatever role you can get, whether that be a gory B-movie horror or a cheesy comedy, but once you find your footing, as Reese Witherspoon certainly has, you really have free rein.
She’s appeared in a variety of genres over the years, starring in thrillers at the beginning of her career, like Fear and Freeway, as well as landing supporting roles in the likes of American Psycho and Twilight (no, not that one), yet, it was the movies that allowed Witherspoon to turn in lighter, more comedic performances, such as Election and Legally Blonde, which really propelled her into the limelight.
Witherspoon has a natural flair for comedic timing, and when she’s given the space to lead a movie with her wit, it’ll almost certainly result in an incredibly compelling performance, even if the material is slightly lacklustre.
While laughathons and romance flicks have served her well, she can slip into a more dramatic part when called to the mantel, as evidenced by her performance in Wild, further proving her versatility as an actor; however, it’s the movies often made with a female audience in mind, where she feels most comfortable and excited.
Hollywood has long suggested that thrillers, action movies, superhero films and crime dramas, genres typically seen as ‘male’, are superior to romantic comedies and female-centric dramas, but Witherspoon wants that to change, and not by falling victim to sexist propaganda, which suggests that she has to solely appear in dark and brooding movies to be taken seriously, because you can still deliver incredible, complex performances in more optimistic films.
In a landscape where many actors move between gritty indies and more mainstream titles, like, for instance, Witherspoon’s contemporary Nicole Kidman, who has worked with everyone from Lars von Trier to Baz Luhrmann, the former isn’t as bothered about her reputation. She might not ever be seen as an Isabelle Huppert type, consistently submitting herself to deeply psychological and rather fucked up storylines, but she is very OK with her trajectory so far.
During Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away event, Witherspoon revealed, “I’m not meant to be doing dark, heavy, intense, horror, gore, darkness movies. People like to see me do light movies, and I was like, OK. It doesn’t put you in the cool kids club a lot, but I don’t care; I don’t want to be in the cool kids club. I want to make optimistic stuff that makes girls excited to be women in this world, because it is a wonderful thing to be a woman in this world.”
By embracing her place in the industry, the actor feels the freedom of not succumbing to the pressures of having to exist in a preconceived way; confident in her own skin, she knows the kinds of things she wants to star in, and that’s enough for her.
So, don’t expect to see her fighting for her life in a gore-infested scary movie anytime soon, nor will you likely see her in something too intense, because she’s been there and done that, and it’s just not the kind of heels Elle Woods wants to step into.
