Becoming... Reese Witherspoon

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

LOVE MATCH

A friend brought Phillippe to Witherspoon's 21st birthday party in March 1997 and at night's end, she told him, "I think you're my present." The couple (left, in 1998; right, in August) married in June 1999 and had daughter Ava three months later. "I'm not interested in the fallacy of the Hollywood relationship," says Witherspoon. "We're normal people with normal problems."