It’s not as easy as it looks! Reese Witherspoon sat down on the Today show on Friday, December 16, and revealed that she has newfound respect for Taylor Swift after attempting to sing one of the pop star’s songs as part of the new animated flick Sing.
“Country music is much easier for me,” said the 40-year-old actress, who sang in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, which earned her an Oscar. “Singing Taylor’s song ‘Shake It Off’ was really hard. I happened to run into her while I was making the movie and I was like, ‘I have a new appreciation for how hard you work.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, I work really hard.’”
(An interesting Hollywood tidbit: Both Witherspoon and Swift have dated Jake Gyllenhaal; Witherspoon split up with Gyllenhaal in 2009, and the pop star said “buh-bye” to the actor in 2011.)
In Sing, Witherspoon lends her voice to one of the main characters, a mama pig named Rosita who has powerhouse pipes. The animated film follows a number of other animals as they compete against one another in the town’s singing competition.
Witherspoon has demonstrated her singing prowess before, most notably while playing June Carter Cash opposite Joaquin Phoenix in 2005’s song-heavy Johnny Cash biopic.
On Friday, December 2, Witherspoon and her old friend Matthew McConaughey (who also stars in the film, as a business-minded, theater-owning koala) brought their kids with them to the L.A. premiere of the animated movie.
While the Legally Blonde actress was joined by her look-alike daughter Ava, 17, and sons Deacon, 13, and Tennessee, 4, at the show, McConaughey, 47, brought his own cadre of tiny tots: sons Levi, 8, Livingston, 3, and daughter Vida, 6. Witherspoon’s husband, Jim Toth, was also present for the fun family outing.
