Reese Witherspoon has become the world’s richest actress after selling part of Hello Sunshine, the production company she founded in 2016 to make room for women-led projects.
The estimated value of his fortune is about $ 400 million, according to Forbes magazine. The protagonist of other films like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Wild” triumphs in front and behind the screen.
A NAME THAT IS A SURNAME.
Reese is not the name, at least not the only one, with which the actress came into the world on March 22, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Her parents, Betty, a nurse, and John, an Air Force military doctor, named her Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon, with Reese being her mother’s maiden name, according to Insider.
During his childhood, Witherspoon lived for several years in West Germany, as it was commonly known in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time, one of the two areas in which the country was divided after World War II until their reunification in 1990. Then they moved permanently to Nashville, Tennessee.
The actress was a model student in many ways. According to Vogue magazine in 2019, she had good grades, was popular, played football and was a cheerleader, but she also had a reputation for not biting her tongue when it came to telling her teachers what they were doing wrong. “I always tended to be honest with my opinions,” he told the magazine, “whether they were appropriate or not.”
Witherspoon went to a school for girls. “She definitely encouraged any little feminist pilot she had,” she told Vanity Fair in 2020.
“She was very stubborn, a little twisted. She had a master plan. I could have tried to put beer on the Coca-Cola machine,” she added.
In third grade, he set up a small business from the school desk: he bought hair clips that he customized and sold with a small profit. When the colors he used dripped on the desk, management discovered his activity, Vogue reported.
At the age of seven she started doing small jobs as a model and in 1991, at the age of 14, she got her first major role in “The Man in the Moon”.
START ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDIES.
However, studying remained a priority for her and she entered the prestigious Stanford University to study English Literature in the mid-1990s. But the performance was gaining ground and, after a course, opted to take a leave of absence from which he did not return.
Since then he has worked on films such as “Freeway”, 1996; “Cruel Intentions” and “Election,” in 1999, and “American Psycho,” a year later. In 2001 the actress achieved her first box office success with “Legally Blonde”, the sequel also starred two years later, and repeated with the romantic comedy “Sweet Home Alabama” in 2002.
For her portrayal of June Carter in the acclaimed film about singer Johnny Cash, “Walk the Line,” Witherspoon received an Oscar for Best Actress in 2006. In 2015 she was again nominated in the same category after her work on “Wild,” but this time Julianne Moore took the statuette home. “Mud,” “The Good Lie,” “Wild,” “Hot Pursuit” and “A Wrinkle in Time” are also among the titles of his filmography.
But apart from in front of the cameras, the actress has developed a successful career behind them, thanks to her role as a businesswoman. 21 years ago he founded Type A Films, the producer behind “Legally Blonde” and its sequel, “Penelope” and “Come Home, Nowhere,” according to Insider.
A few years later, in 2012, he launched another company called Pacific Standard, co-founded with Bruna Papandrea, and under his label saw the light “Gone Girl”, “Hot Pursuit” and “Wild”.
“One of the best parts of our job is that we’re buying books and helping authors navigate the process of bringing a book to the screen,” the actress told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015.
In 2016, Witherspoon founded Hello Sunshine, after Papandrea left Pacific Standard to embark on other projects.
“The idea is to put women at the center of the story,” she told Vogue, “I was fed up with seeing scripts in which there was only one female character, poorly written, and yet every actress in town wanted it. because there was nothing else, ”he added.
HAPPY MARRIED TO A TALENT AGENT.
Under the premise that there was more space and need in Hollywood for stories developed by women, told by women, Hello Sunshine has hosted titles like “Big Little Lies,” aired on HBO; “The Morning Show,” which was seen on Apple TV; and “Little Fires Everywhere,” passed through the Hulu platform.
The actress has worked on these series as a co-star alongside Kerry Washington; Jennifer Aniston; Nicole Kidman, with producer Blossom Films, partnered for “Big Little Lies”; Zoë Kravtiz; Meryl Streep and Laura Dern, among others.
Aside from filming, the producer, clothing brand Draper James, her reading club and other professional activities, Witherspoon leads a family life with Jim Toth, her husband, and their three children: Ava, Deacon and Tennessee.
The first two – she had Ava, the eldest of three, when she was 23 – are the result of her previous marriage to fellow actor Ryan Phillippe, with whom she was united from 1997 to 2006.
The couple married in 1999 and separated shortly after she won the Oscar. “The next year after the award it was tough. I got divorced and spent a few years trying to feel better,” she commented on the 60 Minutes program talking about how the end of the relationship affected her career.
In March 2011, Witherspoon married talent agent Jim Toth. “Jim said, ‘I’m going to show you every day what a good partner is, what a good person is. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to do this so much that you’re going to get used to it,'” the actress told Double she in 2012, “and I like … what are you talking about? I’ve never had anyone like that in my life.”
In 2012 the couple welcomed their son in common, Tennessee.
HIGHLIGHTS:.
+++ The protagonist of other films like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Wild” triumphs in front and behind the screen. Its producer was born under the premise that in Hollywood there was more space and need for stories developed by women, told by women.
+++ “The idea is to put women at the center of the story,” she told Vogue about her production company, “I was fed up with seeing scripts in which there was only one female character, poorly written, and yet every actress in town wanted it because there was nothing else, ”she added.
+++ Aside from filming, the producer, clothing brand Draper James, her reading club and other professional activities, Witherspoon leads a family life with Jim Toth, her second husband whom she married in 2011 , and their three children: Ava, Deacon, and Tennessee.