Reese Witherspoon’s deeply embarrassing run-in with the law: “You’re about to find out who I am”
If asked to picture a Hollywood movie star having a run-in with the police, Reese Witherspoon’s name would likely be low on anyone’s list. After all, she’s built a career as America’s sweetheart on screen and a conscientious, high-achieving personality off it. Hell, she even named her first production company, Type A Films, as a winking nod to her well-known perfectionism. That’s why it was so shocking when Witherspoon tangled with the police and faced true public embarrassment for the first time—not least because she pulled the classic “Don’t you know who I am?” card.
In 2013, Witherspoon was filming one of her lesser-known projects, The Good Lie, in Atlanta, Georgia. On April 19th, she and her husband—talent agent Jim Toth—went out for dinner. However, it must have been a late one, as a police officer pulled them over in the early hours while Toth was driving back from the restaurant. The officer alleged that their car was failing to stay in a straight line and observed that Toth had “droopy eyelids, watery, bloodshot eyes, and smelled strongly of alcohol.”
The officer made Toth step out of the vehicle and take a breathalyser test, but Witherspoon allegedly got out of the car repeatedly. In fact, it is claimed that she did it so many times that the officer warned her she’d be arrested if she didn’t stop. In his report, he wrote, “Mrs Witherspoon began to hang out the window and say that she did not believe that I was a real police officer. I told Mrs Witherspoon to sit on her butt and be quiet.”
Even more embarrassingly, though, he reported that Witherspoon allegedly blurted out, “Do you know my name?” before warning, “You’re about to find out who I am. You’re about to be on national news.”
In the end, Toth was arrested for driving under the influence, and Witherspoon was also booked for disorderly conduct. They were released hours later, but by this point, the media had gotten hold of the salacious story, and Witherspoon issued a sheepish statement that read, “I clearly had one drink too many, and I am deeply embarrassed about the things I said.”
A month later, the Legally Blonde star gave her first interview about her humiliating brush with the law. “It was just one of those nights,” she lamented. “We went out to dinner and had one too many glasses of wine. We thought we were OK to drive but we definitely were not. We are just so sorry this happened. We know better than that.”
Witherspoon later admitted that she went to pieces when she saw her husband being arrested. To her credit, she also admitted to saying other “crazy things” to the trooper that weren’t initially reported. “I even told him I was pregnant,” she confessed. “I am not pregnant! I had no idea what I was talking about, and I am so sorry.”
She added that telling her children – then 13 and 9 years old – about the arrest was the worst part of the entire debacle because she knew she should have set a better example for them. “We are so embarrassed by it, but we just had to tell them that when you make a mistake, you have to take responsibility,” she said. “We were honest with them.”
Overall, the unsavoury situation was Witherspoon’s first public slip-up, and she had to face her mistakes and take her medicine. A year and a half later, though, while on the campaign trail for her Oscar-nominated film Wild, she wondered if it had altered her squeaky-clean image in the eyes of the public. After all, nobody’s perfect all the time, even famous movie stars.
She nodded, “I think it was a moment where people realised that I wasn’t exactly what they thought I was”.
