Reese Witherspoon has had a prolific career as an established actress, and, in March 2022, she was named the richest actress in the world by Forbes. While her career may have launched to new heights when she starred in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde, Witherspoon actually made her feature film debut with the 1991 movie The Man on the Moon. She would earn her first Golden Globe nomination eight years later for her role in Election as Tracy Flick. Then, six years later, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Walk the Line. Witherspoon has seamlessly crossed the line between the small and big screens, taking on leading roles in both movies and television.
Outside her acting career, Witherspoon has been busy as a producer. In 2000, she founded Type A Films, which then merged with Bruna Papandrea’s Make Movies banner in 2012 to create a new company called Pacific Standard. Then, in 2016, Witherspoon formed Hello Sunshine, of which Pacific Standard is now a subsidiary. Some of her big upcoming titles include the Where the Crawdads Sing adaptation of Delia Owens’ novel and the newest installment in the Legally Blonde series. In the television world, she has produced Apple’s drama The Morning Show, which was renewed for a third season, and the television adaptation of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. With an impressive resume as both an actress and a producer, Witherspoon has proven capable of taking on multiple arenas. These are the best movies she has produced so far.
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5 Hot Pursuit
New Line Cinema
Action comedy Hot Pursuit was not well received by critics and general audiences alike, but it starred Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara in the leading roles. Witherspoon is Rose Cooper, a cop who takes her job way more seriously than her coworkers, which, essentially, leads her to be demoted to more mundane tasks in the workplace. Enter Daniella Riva (Vergara): Riva is the wife of a drug lord, and when the cops are assigned to protect the couple, it ends in chaos as Riva’s husband is assassinated, and she finds herself handcuffed to Cooper. While the movie takes some strange turns after this, it still garnered some nominations for Teen Choice Awards.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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4 Lucy in the Sky
Pacific Standard
Natalie Portman stars in Lucy in the Sky, a science fiction drama dubbed to be a box office bomb when it was initially released. According to Deadline, Witherspoon was originally expected to star in the lead role, not Portman, but had to drop out due to her commitment to the television series Big Little Lies. Lucy Cola (Portman) returns from her very first mission in space and is a changed woman. She has become enamored with what she experienced outside of Earth, forcing herself to cheat on her husband, and her behavior becomes increasingly concerning. The story was based on the life of former astronaut Lisa Nowak, who, after going to space, saw her marriage and life falling apart before her eyes.
3 Penelope
Type A Films
2006’s Penelope is reminiscent of the era dominated by Disney Channel content and the rise of teen idols in entertainment. After a wealthy family’s servant commits suicide, after being mocked by the family she works for, the woman’s mother turns out to be a witch who curses the family. She condemns the family and says that the next daughter in the family will be born with the face of a pig, and so when a daughter is finally born (Christina Ricci), she does indeed have a pig’s face. Her parents shut her away to live an isolated life away from the public’s eye, but as she grows older, the desire to get away from her stifling life may be the cure to the family curse.
2 Legally Blondes
Legally Blondes was released eight years after the first film, Legally Blonde, took on the legacy of the series and kept it alive after Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde. It stars Camilla and Rebecca Rosso, two British twins, as the cousins of Elle Woods. They move to Southern California from England to start new lives in the states, but adjusting to life in this new country is not as easy as it seems to be. While this initially seemed like the end of the franchise, Reese Witherspoon is set to return as Elle Woods in 2023’s Legally Blonde 3. Delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the threequel was originally expected to be released in 2020. Until then, Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2, and Legally Blondes can provide all the content in this shared universe to keep fans going.
1 Gone Girl
TSG Entertainment
From the “Cool Girl” monologue to Rosamund Pike’s iconic performance, Gone Girl established itself as one of the best psychological thrillers of the 2010s. Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, teacher Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns home one day to find that his wife Amy (Pike) has gone missing, and he has deliberately been framed for her murder. The narrative switches between Amy and Nick’s perspectives, filling in the gaps between their stories and showing how far someone may go to keep up a false pretense. Media and manipulation make an already bad situation worse.
