Reese Witherspoon: “I’m a complex person. Like everyone else»

She has wrinkles around her lips and radiant wrinkles around her eyes. «It’s true! I even asked my beautician what to do with them. And she told me: they are from laughter, Reese. What does it mean: you laugh too often. And I concluded: well, okay, since they are from laughter. I thought, God forbid, from age!

Reese Witherspoon is joking and laughing again. She does laugh a lot. And, as it turns out, she has a lot of various smiles: ironic, apologetic, perky, lyrical-romantic, conspiratorial, caustic, parodic, enthusiastic. She, a beautiful blonde from Tennessee, from the very «gone with the wind» South, a real southern belle — a southern beauty, is alien to the impregnability of plantation daughters and stellar arrogance. She considers the joke to be the best «judgment in the trial of her life», and after her acting feat with «Wild» (dir. Jean-Marc Vallee, 2014) and production with the same «Wild» and «Gone Girl» (it was she who came up with the idea to film the novel Gillian Flynn) she returned to what our adoration brought her — to comedy.

She generally likes to live and play under the guise of a blonde, from which she once created a “legally blonde”, a manifesto of personal “Rizian” feminism: her doll-like blonde used sexist prejudices for purposes that lay far beyond the relations of the sexes.

When we meet in the bar of a Beverly Hills hotel, Reese looks like this — smiling-muslin-sly: she is wearing a white vintage dress with a sharp cut, but in a frivolous flower, and underneath are high heavy white boots with laces. Its diminutiveness is balanced by stability. Like her comedies — realism. And how her sober, open practicality is ironic.

Reese Witherspoon: It’s strange, they constantly ask me why, with my, so to speak, romantic appearance — height 156 cm and this whitishness of mine — there are no roles of weak women at all. Yes, because I don’t know them! A weak woman is simply unrealistic. We all have to be strong — life will lure you out of any hiding place.

Psychologies: It’s easy for you to say, you were always in the public eye, including in life – did you start acting and earn money at what age, at seven?

R. U .: Yes, but that’s not the point. I just look at things soberly and never used rose-colored glasses. It is possible that my practicality comes from upbringing. I’m from the South and brought up in solid Protestant standards — a sense of family and traditions, respect for work, integrity of views.

Southerners, as we know, are also characterized by a certain conservatism…

R. U .: The flip side of unconditional realism. We are practical. And not weak — all the women in our family were strong personalities. My mother, at the age of 20, was left without a mother, whom she loved very much, there was a special connection between them. But she did not allow the orphan complex, offended by life, to get the better of her. I only recently found out how much her mother really meant to her. No, I remember, in childhood, when one of the relatives remembered my grandmother, she was on the verge of tears … But I seriously thought about it only now, playing «Wild». And there the heroine just loses her mother. I called my mom and asked to talk to me about this loss, about that time. And you know, this was our first conversation in our entire life — not about us, not about me, not about my grandmother, she had talked about her before. We rarely talk to our parents about them! And so my mom and I finally talked. About how she felt when she held her mother’s hand in the hospital. When I saw the approach of her death. When I realized that I was left without the most important person in my life. About what kind of person her grandmother wanted to see her. About how she tried to become one. And she became.

Parental expectations are a strong stimulus for our development. Did you have it too?

R. U .: It’s funny, but rather the opposite — parents have always had to put up with my incentives. They even begged me not to rush. And in childhood they called me “type A” — from “type A”, well, you know, once cardiologists and psychologists jointly developed these gradations of people according to the degree of predisposition to heart disease. My parents are doctors. Type A is a workaholic, a bit of a careerist, he climbs, he achieves, he hates ambiguity. Organized, competitive. It’s really me, that’s why I honestly called my first production company — «Type A» … For me, we ourselves are our heroes and our saviors. I was 18 years old when I realized that my parents would not pay for my studies and were not able to support me. Everything I’m going to do in life, I have to do myself. And when at 22 I had a daughter, Ava, this feeling became even stronger: who am I going to be for this little person? Actually, this question arises before anyone who has a child. And you look into yourself … so deep that you lose your mind!

Was Ava’s birth a revolutionary event for you?

R. U .: Not at all, it was so natural for me. All these questions, worries… For me, “Type A”, it’s generally natural to worry. The real revolution was the entry of children into adolescence — when you already clearly see their coming independence. It was then that I put aside the cinema, for the first time I made, so to speak, a “career pause” — in order to be close to them, not to lose touch. In general, their opinion became the most important. When we started making Wild, I decided to… well, tell the kids — Deacon was 10, Ava was 13, and she and her girlfriends are watching my movies — that it was supposed to be pretty explicit sex scenes. Their first reaction was: no, mom, no! But somehow I convinced them that they would say a lot about the heroine and the viewer would be able to sincerely empathize with her … And when the film was ready and they watched it … You know, it was something special — to get approval from your own teenager! In general, I gratefully accept the attention of children. Then I recently heard from Ava: “Mom, you yourself said that drinking water with lemon is healthy!” And she almost burst into tears: my God, she listens to what I tell her !!!

Did you find the sex scenes easy for you? You haven’t played this before, have you?

R. U .: Yes, I panicked! And at the same time, I had no doubt: it is very important that these scenes, with all their frankness, be in the film. You see, too often women feel some sort of guilt about their own sexuality, about their sexual behavior. And we’ve all been brought up to believe that casual sex is shameful, it’s your fault, you can’t enjoy the same freedom that society has allowed men to enjoy. After all, it still condemns a woman if she has several partners. And it was important for me to say directly that a woman should not be ashamed of herself and her sexual behavior. That sexuality can be as powerful as anything else in a person. That freedom to all of us, regardless of gender, should be given equally. If they don’t give, you have to take it yourself. And we … Well, you yourself know, we are kind of shy. Have you seen at least one man who would deny his success, would be afraid to lead something, refuse? And we are right next to each other. I myself was like that. Until the age of 31, she was worried about everything: what kind of mother am I? what actress? am i good? Now I would say to that myself — stop tormenting and tearing. It’s just not productive. In this sense, it is interesting for me to look at a 16-year-old daughter — she is already almost a mature person.

Do you specifically work to ensure that your children can grow up, learn about life? It’s not easy to become a mature person when your parents are movie stars …

R. U .: I would not say that I work … but recently I starred in the movie White Lies. About an American woman who agreed to accept refugees from South Sudan in her home in the United States. And we created the Sudanese Civil War Victims Fund. And so we went to South Sudan. I took Ava with me. She was 14, and she saw it all: she saw boys of her brother’s age who slept on concrete, huddled together in some strange ball for warmth; women who gave birth on bare metal tables, and their little children sat nearby, almost without clothes — they had no clothes … And this amazing spirit is the spirit of life, of overcoming. You should have seen these people! They thanked our foundation so openly… There really is so much joy there… I’m glad Ava was there. True, she did not say a word about what she saw for several more days. It was only her experience, I realized. And that was important to me.

But why was it important to you to take her with you? Fourteen years!

R. U .: They should know what poverty and grief are. What they are in the world and have a direct relation to each of us. But Ava is generally a socially minded person, she is from a generation that no longer lives only within its own life, but in the world.

But there were upheavals in the lives of your children. Did they suffer during your divorce?

R. U .: I suffered, as I now understand, more. At first I held on … Or rather, the injection of adrenaline kept me afloat, and ten months later … Something like a post-traumatic syndrome. It was Christmas, I was supposed to meet someone at the Getty Museum restaurant, but I got stuck in the parking lot. No, she was literally stuck: she could not get out of the car. I couldn’t bring myself to go. Couldn’t meet other living beings. I was like paralyzed. Music is playing somewhere, early twilight, the lights of shops begin to light up, it gets colder in the car … And you can’t get out of it. I just can’t… I got out of the car then as a completely different person. And I don’t know what would have happened to me if I didn’t have friends. It was they who then woke me up, lifted me out of bed, gathered the children to school and drove me. They took me to concerts! Imagine, I never went to concerts until I was 30! I realized then how little I lived before the divorce, how rich and poor at the same time! You know, Ryan and I (Ryan Philippe, actor, ex-husband Witherspoon. — Approx. ed.) broke up, as I now understand, not for any specific reason. We broke up because our term was up. We got married so young and then, as a couple, we were always in sight, our whole life passed under the cameras. Both are tests. But I’m proud of how we got through it. And I’m proud of Ryan — he’s an amazing father and spends so much time with Ava and Deacon. We tried to minimize the consequences of our divorce for them. Although he changed me: I realized that I am not a winner. And a complex person. Like everyone else.

But are you all right now? Did the four of you manage to start a new family?

R. U .: Jim (Jim Toth, actor’s agent, Witherspoon’s second husband. — Approx. ed.) Supports everyone, inspires. Just by nature. And it feels like this … The children did not need a second father, they have a wonderful first. So the family just got together. All are relatives to each other, and what specific relationship is not specified. Here Ava is motherly to her two-year-old brother. From his very birth, she took care of him, bathed him — and I was delighted: someone besides me is afraid that he will slip out of his hands! ..

You were talking about friends. But female friendship is so often questioned …

R. U .: But my friends are the people closest to me. I met my best friend when I was 18, I came to Los Angeles, rented an apartment and just knocked on the door opposite: sorry, I just moved in, I don’t know anyone here … And the girl who opened the door answers: that’s it, I just arrived, I don’t know anyone here! And now for 20 years we have not parted. And then I went to yoga classes for pregnant women when I was waiting for Ava, and since then our group has been friends. No matter how busy we are, we always get together on Saturdays. You know what… In our world, a lot of women are questioned. But that is no reason for us to doubt ourselves.