Celebrity Trivia Facts about Reese Witherspoon »

Of all the new millennium's young female movie stars, only one has proved herself capable of single-handedly headlining a major box-office hit. Not Julia Stiles, not Kirsten Dunst, not Sarah Michelle Gellar. They are successful, but still mostly team-players in teen fare. Only Reese Witherspoon has gone beyond that. Breaking through with Legally Blonde and making a $100 million hit of Sweet Home Alabama, then winning a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk The Line, she separated herself entirely from the new Brat Pack. And this was wholly deliberate as Witherspoon could well rival Madonna in terms of blonde ambition.

She was born Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in New Orleans on the 22nd of March, 1976. She'd spend the first four years of her life in Wiesbaden, Germany where her father, John, was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves, there to fulfil his Vietnam draft obligation. After this, the family - John, wife Betty, first child John Jr and little Laura Jean - would return to America to settle in Nashville.

This was a predictable move for the Witherspoons, being deeply rooted in the South. Their earliest American ancestor, another John, had crossed the pond from Scotland, becoming President of the prestigious Princeton University. Such was his standing that he was asked to sign the original Declaration of Independence. Eventually the family would migrate to the southern states, where they'd be a paragon of the region's genteel aristocracy.

Many decades later, John, who'd graduate top of his class at Yale, would meet Betty while the pair were studying at the University of Tennessee. They'd marry, but their studies would continue, John becoming a surgeon specialising in the ear, nose and throat, while Betty, who'd earn five separate degrees, would become a Ph.D in pediatric nursing, winding up as a professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University.

Of all the new millennium's young female movie stars, only one has proved herself capable of single-handedly headlining a major box-office hit. Not Julia Stiles, not Kirsten Dunst, not Sarah Michelle Gellar. They are successful, but still mostly team-players in teen fare. Only Reese Witherspoon has gone beyond that. Breaking through with Legally Blonde and making a $100 million hit of Sweet Home Alabama, then winning a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk The Line, she separated herself entirely from the new Brat Pack. And this was wholly deliberate as Witherspoon could well rival Madonna in terms of blonde ambition.

She was born Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in New Orleans on the 22nd of March, 1976. She'd spend the first four years of her life in Wiesbaden, Germany where her father, John, was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves, there to fulfil his Vietnam draft obligation. After this, the family - John, wife Betty, first child John Jr and little Laura Jean - would return to America to settle in Nashville.

This was a predictable move for the Witherspoons, being deeply rooted in the South. Their earliest American ancestor, another John, had crossed the pond from Scotland, becoming President of the prestigious Princeton University. Such was his standing that he was asked to sign the original Declaration of Independence. Eventually the family would migrate to the southern states, where they'd be a paragon of the region's genteel aristocracy.

Many decades later, John, who'd graduate top of his class at Yale, would meet Betty while the pair were studying at the University of Tennessee. They'd marry, but their studies would continue, John becoming a surgeon specialising in the ear, nose and throat, while Betty, who'd earn five separate degrees, would become a Ph.D in pediatric nursing, winding up as a professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University.

Reese's performance was truly touching, and mature beyond all expectation, causing critic Roger Ebert to gush "Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I've ever seen in a movie". Tess Harper, who played Dani's mother, later revealed that the cast had known Reese as Little Meryl. High praise indeed, given that the cast included the likes of the Oscar-nominated Sam Waterston. And it was no accident. Already clear on the kind of career she wanted and the kind of actress she wanted to be, Reese's influences did include Meryl Streep, along with Susan Sarandon, Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. This would be made even clearer by Witherspoon's choice of roles in the future.

What happened next was good, but it could have been even better. Word of Reese's talents spread quickly and she was invited to meet up with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, then casting for Cape Fear. Still very young, of course, she didn't know anything about them, but on the plane to her audition, having told the person in the next seat where she was going, she heard ALL about them, particularly the obsessive, brooding, brilliant De Niro. The experience made her so nervous she fluffed the audition, the part of Nick Nolte's sexually awakening daughter going to Juliette Lewis and launching her as one of the top new actresses of the Nineties.

Nominated for a Young Artist Award, Reese did not want for alternative roles. Now faxing in her homework from her movie sets, she moved on to Wildflower, directed by Diane "Annie Hall" Keaton. Set in the Depression-era south, this saw Patricia Arquette as Alice, a 17-year-old who suffers from epilepsy and a hearing impairment. Believed by her stepfather to be possessed, she's locked in a cage out in the barn, only to be saved from this grim fate by two sympathetic youngsters (one being Reese) who help her back into society.

Once again, Reese was impressive, the film leading on to the TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child, directed by Andy Tennant (later to direct her first headlining smash hit Sweet Home Alabama). Here Reese played a youngster with leukaemia and in severe need of a bone marrow transplant. Her half-brother seems a likely donor, but his mother (Reese's stepmother), fearing for his life, refuses permission, sending the whole family into turmoil. It was heavy stuff, and all the more so for not being a major Hollywood production. Once more Reese was nominated for a Young Artist Award.

On she went, continuing to vary her roles as wildly as she could. Next she was off to Africa (now, who opened a movie with the line "I had a farm in Ah-frica"?) for Disney's A Far Off Place. This saw her as a smart little South African who spends a night out in the local caves with a snooty US city kid holidaying on her parents' farm. They emerge the next day to discover everyone's been slaughtered by ivory poachers and so, accompanied by a young bushman, they must cross 2000 kilometres of the Kalahari to reach safety.

Reese's performance was truly touching, and mature beyond all expectation, causing critic Roger Ebert to gush "Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I've ever seen in a movie". Tess Harper, who played Dani's mother, later revealed that the cast had known Reese as Little Meryl. High praise indeed, given that the cast included the likes of the Oscar-nominated Sam Waterston. And it was no accident. Already clear on the kind of career she wanted and the kind of actress she wanted to be, Reese's influences did include Meryl Streep, along with Susan Sarandon, Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter. This would be made even clearer by Witherspoon's choice of roles in the future.

What happened next was good, but it could have been even better. Word of Reese's talents spread quickly and she was invited to meet up with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, then casting for Cape Fear. Still very young, of course, she didn't know anything about them, but on the plane to her audition, having told the person in the next seat where she was going, she heard ALL about them, particularly the obsessive, brooding, brilliant De Niro. The experience made her so nervous she fluffed the audition, the part of Nick Nolte's sexually awakening daughter going to Juliette Lewis and launching her as one of the top new actresses of the Nineties.

Nominated for a Young Artist Award, Reese did not want for alternative roles. Now faxing in her homework from her movie sets, she moved on to Wildflower, directed by Diane "Annie Hall" Keaton. Set in the Depression-era south, this saw Patricia Arquette as Alice, a 17-year-old who suffers from epilepsy and a hearing impairment. Believed by her stepfather to be possessed, she's locked in a cage out in the barn, only to be saved from this grim fate by two sympathetic youngsters (one being Reese) who help her back into society.

Once again, Reese was impressive, the film leading on to the TV movie Desperate Choices: To Save My Child, directed by Andy Tennant (later to direct her first headlining smash hit Sweet Home Alabama). Here Reese played a youngster with leukaemia and in severe need of a bone marrow transplant. Her half-brother seems a likely donor, but his mother (Reese's stepmother), fearing for his life, refuses permission, sending the whole family into turmoil. It was heavy stuff, and all the more so for not being a major Hollywood production. Once more Reese was nominated for a Young Artist Award.

On she went, continuing to vary her roles as wildly as she could. Next she was off to Africa (now, who opened a movie with the line "I had a farm in Ah-frica"?) for Disney's A Far Off Place. This saw her as a smart little South African who spends a night out in the local caves with a snooty US city kid holidaying on her parents' farm. They emerge the next day to discover everyone's been slaughtered by ivory poachers and so, accompanied by a young bushman, they must cross 2000 kilometres of the Kalahari to reach safety.

Next came Overnight Delivery where a jealous student, convinced that his girlfriend is cheating on him, sends her a vicious Dear Joan letter, a used condom and a picture of himself with a semi-clad woman (Reese, a local stripper). Almost immediately, though, he discovers that no cheating has taken place and so he takes off across country to intercept the letter, accompanied by Reese, who he doesn't know or like but needs to prove his own fidelity. Can he stop the Terminator-like postman from delivering the fatal epistle, or will he make the scene in the photograph a reality by falling for Reese?

After this came the weird and wonderful Pleasantville. This saw Reese getting down and dirty once more, as the sex-obsessed sister of Tobey Maguire, a boy so unhappy with his life he becomes fixated on a black and white Fifties sit-com set in a small town where everything is, well, pleasant. Via some freaky chicanery with a magic remote-control, the pair suddenly find themselves in Pleasantville where Maguire, who knows all the scripts inside-out, is able to quickly adapt to a new, goody-goody lifestyle. Reese, on the other hand, is not so keen to give up her habitual shenanigans, and after a liaison with a young local on Lovers Lane causes colour to infect this black and white landscape, as Pleasantville's culture of decency begins to disintegrate.

Like most of Reese's movies, Pleasantville was a hit with the critics. Her next effort, though, would be pointedly populist. Cruel Intentions, a teenie adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, had Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Glenn Close role, betting Ryan Phillippe that he can't seduce prim and virginal Reese. If he can't, she gets his flash motor. If he can, he gets her.

This movie - slick, sexy and well produced - was different for Reese. Not only was it a mainstream hit, but it also had her working with husband-to-be Phillippe for the first time. It proved a fraught experience. Filming the scene where Phillippe dumps her, Ryan was off-camera, feeding her lines. Tired after numerous takes, he began to ad-lib, shouting stuff like "I never loved you! You're not attractive!" It was a little too much for his fiancee to bear. She freaked out, punched him in the face and screamed at him to get out, the fracas leaving her in tears and him out in the stairwell, vomiting uncontrollably. Naturally, director Roger Kumble loved it and asked them to do it again.

Now came perhaps the most important film of her career - Election. This saw her as the central character in a major movie for the first time, carrying it with a superb performance as Tracy Flick, a high school princess determined to dominate the student council. She's so unbearably (and hilariously) straight, controlling and manipulative, you have great sympathy when teacher Matthew Broderick decides to foil her plans by persuading jock Chris Klein to run against her. It was a brilliant political satire, with absolutely everyone's position undermined by the grossest hypocrisy. It was no surprise when Reese was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Witherspoon's youthful looks helped out once again with Best Laid Plans. This was another involved and involving thriller, where Josh Brolin, out for a drink with Alessandro Nivola, a buddy he hasn't seen in years, picks Reese up and takes her back to the house he's looking after. Later that night, he calls Nivola in a right old state. Things were going very well, he says, until Reese told him she was underage and accused him of rape and assault. All in a spin, he chained her to the pool-table, so now he's going down for kidnapping, too. What's a boy to do? Nivola promises to come straight over, and gradually we discover that things are not remotely as they seem.

Best Laid Plans was gritty fun, but nowhere near as out-there as Reese's next appearance, as Evelyn Williams, Christian Bale's materialistic, superficial fiancee in American Psycho. All she wants is to get married and own things. All he wants is to sleep with her best friend and cut people up with chainsaws. Really, they deserve each other.

Despite American Psycho's notoriety and body count, it was a sharp feminist movie and extremely funny, to boot. Reese was proving herself to be a gifted comedienne, and continued the process with a cameo in Adam Sandler's Little Nicky. Here Sandler played one of the Devil's three sons, a kid who simply can't be wicked and faces huge problems when he must leave Hell to track down and capture his two eminently evil brothers. Along the way, he meets Reese, an angel of dubious genetic origin who, having slept with the Devil, turns out to be his mother (hence his niceness). Once more, Witherspoon was highly amusing, giving the angel a painful Valley Girl accent perfect for such lines "He's (God's) so smart. Like, Jeopardy smart". She continue the comedy with a recurring role as Jennifer Aniston's little sister in Friends.

Now came perhaps the most important film of her career - Election. This saw her as the central character in a major movie for the first time, carrying it with a superb performance as Tracy Flick, a high school princess determined to dominate the student council. She's so unbearably (and hilariously) straight, controlling and manipulative, you have great sympathy when teacher Matthew Broderick decides to foil her plans by persuading jock Chris Klein to run against her. It was a brilliant political satire, with absolutely everyone's position undermined by the grossest hypocrisy. It was no surprise when Reese was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Witherspoon's youthful looks helped out once again with Best Laid Plans. This was another involved and involving thriller, where Josh Brolin, out for a drink with Alessandro Nivola, a buddy he hasn't seen in years, picks Reese up and takes her back to the house he's looking after. Later that night, he calls Nivola in a right old state. Things were going very well, he says, until Reese told him she was underage and accused him of rape and assault. All in a spin, he chained her to the pool-table, so now he's going down for kidnapping, too. What's a boy to do? Nivola promises to come straight over, and gradually we discover that things are not remotely as they seem.

Best Laid Plans was gritty fun, but nowhere near as out-there as Reese's next appearance, as Evelyn Williams, Christian Bale's materialistic, superficial fiancee in American Psycho. All she wants is to get married and own things. All he wants is to sleep with her best friend and cut people up with chainsaws. Really, they deserve each other.

Despite American Psycho's notoriety and body count, it was a sharp feminist movie and extremely funny, to boot. Reese was proving herself to be a gifted comedienne, and continued the process with a cameo in Adam Sandler's Little Nicky. Here Sandler played one of the Devil's three sons, a kid who simply can't be wicked and faces huge problems when he must leave Hell to track down and capture his two eminently evil brothers. Along the way, he meets Reese, an angel of dubious genetic origin who, having slept with the Devil, turns out to be his mother (hence his niceness). Once more, Witherspoon was highly amusing, giving the angel a painful Valley Girl accent perfect for such lines "He's (God's) so smart. Like, Jeopardy smart". She continue the comedy with a recurring role as Jennifer Aniston's little sister in Friends.

Now came perhaps the most important film of her career - Election. This saw her as the central character in a major movie for the first time, carrying it with a superb performance as Tracy Flick, a high school princess determined to dominate the student council. She's so unbearably (and hilariously) straight, controlling and manipulative, you have great sympathy when teacher Matthew Broderick decides to foil her plans by persuading jock Chris Klein to run against her. It was a brilliant political satire, with absolutely everyone's position undermined by the grossest hypocrisy. It was no surprise when Reese was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Witherspoon's youthful looks helped out once again with Best Laid Plans. This was another involved and involving thriller, where Josh Brolin, out for a drink with Alessandro Nivola, a buddy he hasn't seen in years, picks Reese up and takes her back to the house he's looking after. Later that night, he calls Nivola in a right old state. Things were going very well, he says, until Reese told him she was underage and accused him of rape and assault. All in a spin, he chained her to the pool-table, so now he's going down for kidnapping, too. What's a boy to do? Nivola promises to come straight over, and gradually we discover that things are not remotely as they seem.

Best Laid Plans was gritty fun, but nowhere near as out-there as Reese's next appearance, as Evelyn Williams, Christian Bale's materialistic, superficial fiancee in American Psycho. All she wants is to get married and own things. All he wants is to sleep with her best friend and cut people up with chainsaws. Really, they deserve each other.

Despite American Psycho's notoriety and body count, it was a sharp feminist movie and extremely funny, to boot. Reese was proving herself to be a gifted comedienne, and continued the process with a cameo in Adam Sandler's Little Nicky. Here Sandler played one of the Devil's three sons, a kid who simply can't be wicked and faces huge problems when he must leave Hell to track down and capture his two eminently evil brothers. Along the way, he meets Reese, an angel of dubious genetic origin who, having slept with the Devil, turns out to be his mother (hence his niceness). Once more, Witherspoon was highly amusing, giving the angel a painful Valley Girl accent perfect for such lines "He's (God's) so smart. Like, Jeopardy smart". She continue the comedy with a recurring role as Jennifer Aniston's little sister in Friends.

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