Move over Real Housewives — Reese Witherspoon is coming to town.
On the heels of her global promotional tour for her already Oscar-buzzed flick Wild, Witherspoon, 38, covers the January 2015 issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, shot by photographer Alexi Lubomirski. Wearing clean makeup, prim threads, and her blonde hair styled in loose waves, Witherspoon opens up about being stereotyped in Hollywood and the challenges within the film.
In a closeup featured in the spread, Witherspoon wears a light blue Fendi dress, which brought out the blue in her eyes. Another striking image captures the actress sitting on a kitchen counter wearing a long pencil skirt with a ruffled hemline and a neutral knit top.
Known among most audiences for portraying Elle Woods, the naïve brat-turned-lawyer with a penchant for hot pink in the Legally Blonde movies, Witherspoon advises against stereotyping her. “Don’t put me in that box. Or any box, for that matter,” she told the magazine. “People are complex, on screen and off. Can’t we do justice to that?”
With her newest and most challenging role yet, Witherspoon had to build up a lot of courage to portray a drug addict on a 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. “I’ve never done drugs, so I was really confused,” Witherspoon said. “It just required being in a really raw emotional place that didn’t feel good.”
Probably the most challenging sequence of the whole film involved her taking her clothes off. “[The sex scenes were], like, three percent of the movie, but it took up a tremendous amount of fear in my mind because it’s daunting,” the mother of three said. “I never looked ahead at the schedule. I would wake up in the morning and say, ‘What are we doing today?’ And I’d prepare on the way to work. Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft… ‘You can’t make me do it.’”
