From PEOPLE Magazine
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It's early May on the set of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, and Witherspoon, 27, is already four months into her pregnancy. After playing a cat-and-mouse game with the media in April—she tried to keep her pregnancy a secret during the first trimester—Witherspoon is now speaking freely about the blessed event. It was last winter, she says, after she returned from a Caribbean vacation with her husband, actor Ryan Phillippe, 28, and their 3-year-old daughter Ava, that she learned she was once again expecting. It wasn't entirely a surprise. "It's something that I'm always open to," says Witherspoon. "I was just happy if it happened. Ryan's really excited about having another baby. And I'm really excited. And Ava's more excited than both of us. She's dreamy about it. She likes to prepare her room for when her brother or sister comes. I think she'll be a great older sister." For the Legally Blonde 2 scene being shot today—a surprise party that includes costar Jennifer Coolidge—Witherspoon will be seated to hide her pregnancy. During her lunch break, she slips out of her hot-pink chiffon outfit and into a comfy white robe. The belt strains against her round midsection, but the rest of her 5'2" frame remains thin and delicate. "You see, I'm eating salads!" she says, lancing a piece of lettuce with her fork and taking a swig of bottled water. "I'm trying!"
And when Witherspoon tries, she usually succeeds. She's been appearing in movies since she was a teenager, and she long ago gained the respect of critics. Then came Legally Blonde in 2001, in which she starred as Elle Woods, a fashion-crazed but whip-smart sorority girl from Bel-Air who follows a guy to Harvard Law School and ends up at the top of her class. It was followed by last year's Sweet Home Alabama. Witherspoon recalls how "surreal" it was to see her giant head floating above L.A. on the Alabama billboards, though "it was great to get back to my [southern] roots. I think people can tell when you're having fun in a movie." The film's $127 million gross established Witherspoon as Hollywood's most bankable star under 30. "I feel like I'm just finally getting who I am, and it's really nice that at the same time, audiences are kind of getting who I am too," says Witherspoon. And who is she, exactly? She thinks for a moment and answers, "When I had a kid, it clarified a lot of things to me. I'm not a supercool person. And I've never had the most friends. I'm a mom and a wife, and that's what I like to be."
She's also happy being a role model. When the first Legally Blonde came out, "I got a lot of great things, like 6-year-olds saying 'I want to go to Harvard Law School!' It's so inspiring to me as a woman." Despite her fizzy onscreen persona, in person she's more businesslike than bubbly; her mother called her Little Miss Type A when she was a girl. She's also a rare combination in Hollywood: a serious feminist as well as a strict practitioner of old-fashioned southern manners. And while producers view many stars her age as difficult children—Will they come to the set hung over? Will they run off with Justin Timberlake?—Witherspoon is seen as a keen businesswoman and devoted wife. As for her newfound superstardom, she doesn't particularly enjoy it. "I read I have a $10 million mansion, which I'm very excited to see one day," she says, smiling through her sarcasm. "I read I was moving to London. I read that I'm doing Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I wonder when my agent will call and tell me." She's especially offended by the paparazzi who lie in wait outside her home, film set or even the grocery store. By trying to keep her family from the glare, she says, "your world just gets so small."
Marc Platt, coproducer of the Legally Blonde movies, says Witherspoon has "matured as she's taken on the responsibility of being a movie star and raising a family. She's a little more serious, though still a lot of fun." As an executive producer of the second Blonde, she helped develop the script, in which Elle—with trunks full of Marc Jacobs, Jimmy Choo and Chanel—leaves Boston to fight animal testing in Washington, D.C. As an animal lover (and owner of three dogs), Witherspoon came up with the idea for the film's Million Dog March. "Our ideas sort of stemmed from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but from a female perspective," says Witherspoon, who earned $15 million to return to the role. On the set her maternal instincts were in full bloom: Witherspoon "showered us with cookies and ice cream," says director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. She also brought in a karaoke machine and serenaded the crew with Dolly Parton's "9 to 5." Her daughter frequently visited the set, and during her downtime, Witherspoon bonded with costar Sally Field. (Both Field and Bob Newhart signed on to the film because they were Witherspoon fans.) "We had a lot of long talks about everything," says Field, who also became a star (as TV's Gidget and The Flying Nun) when she was a new mother in her 20s. "She's a serious actress," says Field. "She's very curious, and she really wants to know what other people have been through."
At the moment, Witherspoon is focused on her juggling—keeping both family and career in motion. "She doesn't pretend that it's all so perfect," says Andy Tennant, a longtime friend who directed Sweet Home Alabama. "That's the refreshing part with her. She can actually come to the set and say, 'F---! This is hard, being a mom!' " Witherspoon eases the stress with daily yoga classes and the workload with a part-time nanny and housekeeper. "I certainly have my share of help," she admits, "but really, Ryan and I enjoy being parents." The couple also have a pact that they won't make movies at the same time so the family can be on location together. "It's great for Ava, because she always gets full attention from one parent," says Witherspoon. "I love taking her to school and participating in snack time. I get jealous when other people get to spend time with my kid. When I work, it's hard, because I know she doesn't want to hang out on the set all day for 18 hours. But then I get these great extended amounts of time, like six months or a year, just to be Mom. I feel very lucky."
It was her own mother, Betty, 54, a professor of nursing, who provided the blueprint for working momhood. "My mother was working a 10-hour day and picking up her kids and cooking dinner and balancing the workload with her husband," says Witherspoon, who has one brother, John, 30. "She just has a great joie de vivre. It's made me a very positive person too." Witherspoon describes both parents as "eccentric": Her surgeon father, John Witherspoon, 61, "rides Harley-Davidsons and collects old Cadillac Eldorados." He raised the family in a wealthy Nashville neighborhood, and Reese attended the exclusive all-girls Harpeth Hall School. You still can't take the Nashville out of the girl: Witherspoon is a big believer in thank-you notes and admits to being "obsessed with Tupperware" and keeping things organized. "The [main] thing my parents instilled in me, being in the medical profession, was a great care and nurturing for other people," she says. "It's also a southern sensibility. That's what I try to encourage in Ava."
Growing up, Witherspoon was studious and was known as Big Words to her friends. She was also cute as a kitten and worked as a child model. She fell in love with acting after appearing in a TV commercial for a florist at age 7 and had made seven movies before she graduated from high school. A decade before he directed Sweet Home Alabama, Tennant cast her in the 1992 TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child. "She was, at 15, far more grown-up than I was," says Tennant, 48. In 1994 Witherspoon enrolled at Stanford University but left after a year when director Robert Benton offered her a part in the murder mystery Twilight.
She met Phillippe at her 21st-birthday party in 1997. "It was a pretty intense, emotional connection," Phillippe said in 2001. "Reese is a happy, lighthearted person, but she's also incredibly intelligent." Phillippe and Witherspoon married in June 1999, three months before she gave birth to Ava. Asked if she feels she missed anything by marrying and starting a family at such a young age, she says, "I was never a party person. I feel like I had fun with my friends when I was young in high school. We went to movies and had a good time and stayed up late and all that kind of stuff. It was enough." Witherspoon and Phillippe do have friends in show business—Luke Wilson and Selma Blair are among their pals—but they are seldom to be found on the party circuit. You'll never see them hanging out with, say, the cast of Charlie's Angels. "I know them," says Witherspoon, "but yeah, there's nothing better to me than being at home on a Friday night and eating pizza, watching movies or hanging out with Ava."
Hanging at home with their daughter usually involves "playing make-believe," says Witherspoon. "She likes princesses. And she likes to pretend she's a dog." For that endeavor, Ava has inspiration to spare. The family's three dogs are an English bulldog named Frank Sinatra ("Ryan always wanted a bulldog named Frank Sinatra"), a French bulldog named Coco Chanel ("I like to put pearls on her, but Ryan makes me take them off. He doesn't like dog jewelry") and a Chihuahua (much like her canine costar in both Legally Blonde films) named after golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez.
For now, the house is mostly empty. Soon after finishing work on Legally Blonde 2, Witherspoon took off for England to shoot Vanity Fair—an adaptation of William Thackeray's 1848 masterpiece—with husband and daughter in tow. "We have fun together," says Witherspoon. "We're like the Griswolds. We take Europe! We're driving on the wrong side of the road and trying to find some American food." When Vanity Fair is complete, the family will return to L.A. and begin "nesting," she says, preparing for their new arrival. "On the second baby you don't worry about it as much," says Witherspoon. "The first time I was, like, panicked. 'I need a crib and I need it by this date!' Now I'm just much more relaxed." And if she has a girl, Witherspoon wouldn't mind her playing with an Elle Woods Barbie. "Part of what I love about Elle is she's fun," says Witherspoon. "She's laughing and she's girly and she likes to have her nails done. But she's also successful and ambitious." Like Witherspoon herself, "she's not just what you think she is."
Jess Cagle
Michael Fleeman in Los Angeles, Beverly Keel in Nashville, Amy Longsdorf and KC Baker in New York City and Liz Corcoran in London
- Contributors:
- Michael Fleeman,
- Beverly Keel,
- Amy Longsdorf,
- K.C. Baker,
- Liz Corcoran.
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