Powerful performance: actress and producer Reese Witherspoon
In 2011, Reese Witherspoon received a script that made her question her future in Hollywood . At the age of 35, she received outstanding credits including The Election, Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama, and won an Oscar for Best Actress for playing the stern June Carter Cash in 2006 in the biopic about Johnny Cashe Walk the Line.
However, she found herself leafing through a script rife with brash male and female characters whose primary identity is that they are someone's girlfriends. Witherspoon called her agent and said she was not interested. Her agent backed off. «He told me that every actress in Hollywood wants one of those roles,» she has said since. «There were [roles] for two women, and they were both deplorable, disgusting, terrible.» Witherspoon never named the film, although she confirmed that it was shown in theaters.
Frustrated, Witherspoon arranged meetings with several top Hollywood executives to find out why there weren't enough interesting female roles of a certain age, but their responses were depressing. «One even told me, 'We have a movie with a woman in the middle, but we're not going to do two this year,'» she later said. Jim Toth, then a well-known talent agent and Witherspoon's second husband (now filing for divorce citing «irreconcilable differences»), suggested to his wife that she use her love of reading — Witherspoon is known to read three to four books a day. week — to generate ideas for films. in which she would love to play the lead role.
In 2012, she founded the production company Pacific Standard and released her first two books: Wild, a mournful memoir by Cheryl Straid, and Gone Girl, a psychological thriller by Gillian Flynn. She starred in Wild and played Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl. Both were instant box office hits and earned Witherspoon and Pike Oscar nominations for Best Actress.
Now 47-year-old Witherspoon, mother of three, is one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. Pacific Standard was rebranded as the larger digital media company Hello Sunshine in 2016 and has produced a number of hit TV shows that have dominated both streaming platforms and the zeitgeist with their feminine storylines, glossy aesthetic and cast. These include The Morning Show on Apple TV, as well as literary adaptations such as Big Little Lies, Fires Smoldering Everywhere, Where the Crayfish Sing (the first Hello Sunshine movie to hit theaters), and the recent Amazon Prime series Daisy Jones. ; Six.
Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. Photo: Tracy Bennett/Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock
This month saw the release of two more plays of Hello Sunshine, the drama about the tormented aunt «Little Pretty Things» on Disney+ and the Apple TV mystery thriller The Last Thing He Said to Me, starring Jennifer Garner. A third Legally Blonde film is in development, the Dolly Parton/James Patterson thriller Run Rose Run and, in a bizarre meeting of worlds, the company's first UK project: a Channel 4 home improvement show called Bricking It. Stacy Solomon. Hello Sunshine has become such a giant that Witherspoon sold a controlling stake to private equity firm Blackstone for $900 million in 2021, though Witherspoon continues to control day-to-day operations.
Having starred in many of Hello Sunshine's own films, Witherspoon's net worth as an actress has skyrocketed, now commanding over $1 million per episode for TV roles and many more millions more for film projects. She is the richest actress in the world with approximately $400 million (£324 million) in the bank, according to Forbes.
«I can't think of a bigger actress-turned-producer success story,» says Helen O'Hara, author of Women Against Hollywood.
Born in New Orleans and raised in Nashville, Witherspoon landed her first film role when she was just 14 years old when she landed the lead role in Robert Mulligan's coming-of-age drama The Man in the Moon. A well-read teenager, she enrolled at Stanford to study English literature, but as her acting career took off, she dropped out and moved to Los Angeles. Due to her sharp intellect and unshakable belief in herself, it is unlikely that life in front of the camera will ever fully satisfy her. At the age of 27, she received her first producer credit with Legally Blonde 2.
Keen Intellect: Witherspoon at the Salute Sunshine Tour. Photo: Robin Marchand/Getty Images, North America
«There's a female power feminism that's been the image of Reese since Legally Blonde,» says Alice Leppert, co-editor of Celebrity Studies. «[If you look at] Big Little Lies, it's about female relationships, about how women build friendships and relationships that don't necessarily revolve around men.»
Big Little Lies was Witherspoon's third triumph as a producer. «I wasn't offered opportunities to grow my company until I got my third chance,» she told The Wall Street Journal. «The guy has one hit at Sundance and he gets Jurassic World.»
What makes Hello Sunshine different from the many other actor-led companies springing up in Hollywood? “Hello Sunshine really understood a specific audience better than anyone in the studio, understood that audience and had the skills to create products tailored specifically for them,” says Richard Rushfield, founder of Hollywood newsletter The Ankler. «Reese created a recognizable, familiar and likable character through her on-screen roles, and then she created a series of products that seemed to come from that character.»
Witherspoon fans are given personal access to this character through her book. club, which she launched in 2017 and for which she posts testimonial videos and interviews with creators on Instagram filmed in her huge beach house style home for her 2.7 million followers. Like Oprah Winfrey's book club, it can change the fate of an author forever, as well as serving as a useful testing ground for adaptations of Hello Sunshine adaptations. Reese Witherspoon with Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley in Big Little Lies. Photo: HBO
“And, of course, it helps these books get on the bestseller list, adding value to the TV show,” says O'Hara. Delia Owens' «Where the Crawfish Sing» sold 189,000 copies in its first three months, according to Publishers Weekly. A year later, when it became the best month at the Reese Book Club, sales jumped to over a million.
A strange cloud hangs over the Hello Sunshine story. The film adaptation of Owens' book was widely panned by critics, as were the 2023 Netflix romantic comedies Your Place or Mine and The Last Thing He Said to Me. The company has also been criticized for focusing its projects on the lives of suburban white women.
“The problem is that this company has grown and now has a lot of mouths to feed, which means you need to do a lot of things,” says Rushfield. “It's getting harder to maintain quality control. It's the natural cycle of entertainment companies, but I think Hello Sunshine still has a fair amount of credibility left.»
O'Hara says it's inevitable that «Reese's career will continue to grow.»
Reese's Writing: Her Biggest Hits
Big Little Lies (2017)-2019)
Based on the 2014 novel by Liana Moriarty, Witherspoon produced and starred in this hit HBO miniseries about a group of Californian women involved in a murder investigation that won eight Emmy awards. The tone of Desperate Housewives was conveyed through LA Confidential, and the cast, which included Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, was a Hollywood star.
Morning show (2019–2023)
Witherspoon's first hit on Apple TV to star in and executive produce this poignant comedy-drama set on a prime-time TV talk show. It wasn't as abrupt as it could have been, but it nonetheless started Apple's reputation for obsessively watchable TV.
Fires Smoldering Everywhere (2020)
Beautiful houses, mean men, shattered female friendships… you could probably spot it as Witherspoon property from a mile away. However, as a producer and star, she turned Celeste Ng's fast-paced thriller into television gold.
Where the Crayfish Sing (2022)
Yes, critics derided it as fried southern rubbish, but the public didn't care. Daisy Edgar-Jones' first big-screen role on Ordinary People grossed $140 million at the box office, another success for Witherspoon's film.
Daisy Jones & The Six (2023)
Chief Witherspoon produced the first 10 episodes of this Amazon Prime hit about a roaring 1970s rock band.
The last thing he told me is coming Apple TV+ now
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