Dallas County Living Well Magazine November/December 2018 | Page 12

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
SPOTLIGHT
Continued from page 9
ties fade. Remember, she’s a Southern girl with grit and
determination––or, as fellow actress Kerry Washington
describes Witherspoon: “Genteel Southern badass.”
In response, Witherspoon started her own production
company. Because, as she told the Hollywood Report-
er, she was frustrated with the “complete lack of in-
teresting female leads in film.” In 2014, she brought
two of the first books optioned by the company to the
big screen: Gillian Flynn’s dark thriller Gone Girl,
and Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild. Gone Girl was
a box office smash. Wild landed Witherspoon, who
starred as Strayed, her second Oscar nomination.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Witherspoon dis-
cussed the moment she decided to become a pro-
ducer after being offered a terrible, mind-numbing
script. “It was just awful. I called my agent, I said,
‘I’m not gonna do this. Who would want to do
this?’ He said every actress in Hollywood wants
this part. It was just a lightbulb moment for me.”
Since the success of Gone Girl and Wild, Witherspoon
has only grown more confident in her choices and the
projects she devotes her time. In addition to films, Wither-
spoon brought Liane Moriarty’s book, “Big Little Lies,” to
HBO as a seven-part miniseries. Witherspoon produced
the hit show, along with her co-star, Nicole Kidman.
Getty Images
According to an interview with Fast Company’s Mary
Kaye Schilling, around the time that they were devel-
oping Big Little Lies, in 2014, Witherspoon began
noting changes in consumer behavior. “Women ar-
en’t going to movies. They were streaming shows.
They were on Instagram and Facebook. Digital was
winning. The only way was to go where women
are, instead of expecting them to come to us.”
In response, Witherspoon has harnessed not only the
force of the small screen, but the power of social me-
dia with her Instagram account (14.6 million followers
to date) and a recently announced video-on-demand
channel with AT&T, through her media company, Hello
Sunshine. According to a press release, Witherspoon
will headline her own unscripted series, Shine On With
Reese, featuring interviews with prominent women.
TOP, THIS PAGE: Reese, escorted by her husband Jim
Toth and children, to the premiere of Sing.
RIGHT: Reese starring alongside Oprah Winfrey and Mindy
Kaling in the 2018 movie A Wrinkle In Time.
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DALLAS COUNTY Living Well Magazine | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
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