Photo SpecialBecoming... Reese Witherspoon

See how the Vanity Fair star went from Nashville schoolgirl to Hollywood A-lister. By Serena Kappes

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SCHOOL SPIRIT

Witherspoon attended the all-girl Harpeth Hall School in Nashville. The actress (in her senior-year cheerleading photo in 1994) was so academically minded that her pals nicknamed her Big Words. "I was always more interested in studying than in boys," she says. Upon graduation, she enrolled in prestigious Stanford University, but left after a year to pursue acting.

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