The years of her career Reese Witherspoon would love to delete from history: “I was a little bit lost”
Navigating a Hollywood career can be a tricky business, and most A-list stars experience many ups and downs along the way. Take Reese Witherspoon, for example. These days, she’s a big and small screen sweetheart and a powerhouse producer with a proven track record of success. She’s as beloved for Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama as she is for The Morning Show and Big Little Lies, and has an almost flawless public image. It wasn’t always this way, though, and there was a period in her career that Witherspoon would probably want to delete from history if she could. In fact, she admitted she felt “lost.”
In the late ’90s, Witherspoon rose to fame with her roles in Pleasantville, Election, and Cruel Intentions, before she landed her first bona fide leading lady hit with Legally Blonde in 2001. The uber-girly, uber-smart lawyer Elle Woods became her signature character and a genuine feminist icon, and she played her again in the sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde in 2003, in between two other rom-com hits in Sweet Home Alabama and Just Like Heaven.
In 2005, though, Witherspoon reached beyond the rom-com world in a big way when she played June Carter Cash in James Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line – and won the Oscar for ‘Best Actress’ in the process. Suddenly, Witherspoon was an award-winning Hollywood leading lady, and the industry watched with bated breath to see what shape her career took from that point forward. Unfortunately, though, as with countless other stars who won Little Gold Men, she subsequently seemed to fall victim to the dreaded ‘Oscar curse.’
Over the next six years, the only hit movies Witherspoon was a part of were Four Christmases, Water for Elephants, and This Means War. Despite being financially successful, though, all three films were critically derided and have been largely forgotten by the filmgoing populace. In this period, Witherspoon also starred in Rendition, a star-studded political thriller that wound up less than the sum of its parts, and How Do You Know, the ludicrously expensive dramedy that tanked at the box office and prompted Jack Nicholson to call time on his acting career.
In 2014, Witherspoon admitted that during her post-Oscar years, she struggled to figure out what she wanted to do with her career. Unsurprisingly, the work suffered. “I think for a few years I was a little bit lost as an artist,” she confessed. “Not being able to find what I wanted to do and making choices that I wasn’t ultimately very happy with.”
When Witherspoon finally saw clearly that she had strayed from the line she wanted to walk – get it?! – She began endeavouring to return to playing “interesting, dynamic female characters.” First, she took a supporting role in the Jeff Nichols indie Mud alongside Matthew McConaughey, bringing her the best reviews she’d received in years.
In 2014, though, her lead role in Wild brought her career full circle in more ways than one. The biographical drama was based on a memoir by Cheryl Strayed entitled Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, and it told the story of how she hiked the trail in 1995 after a series of issues left her personal life in tatters. Over the course of the film, Strayed finds her purpose in life after years of feeling lost and adrift – something that mirrored what Witherspoon did by starring in the movie.
Fittingly, Wild notched Witherspoon her second Academy Award nomination, with Variety’s Justin Chang gushing that her performance “represents easily her most affecting and substantial work in the nine years since Walk the Line.” She wasn’t lost anymore.
