It’s safe to say that Reese Witherspoon steps out of her comfort zone when it comes to playing a heroin addict in her new movie Wild.
Known for playing the quintessential ‘good girl’ on screen, Reese is now opening up to Harper’s Bazaar UK about what it was like filming graphic drug and sex scenes for her trendy new role.
Reese plays real-life Cheryl Strayed, whose bestselling memoir of the same name details the brutal solo trek Strayed undertook at the age of 26 along the Pacific Crest Trail.
“I’ve never done drugs, so I was really confused,” Reese admits. “I didn’t know what I was doing. It just required being in a really raw emotional place that didn’t feel right.”
Although, according to the 38-year-old Oscar winner, filming the sex scenes was even harder. One particular scene involves Reese and two other male actors.
“There were little descriptions in the script, but when it started to describe what we were going to do, that’s when I started to freak out,” she reveals. “It’s about three percent of the movie, but it took a huge amount of fear out of me because it’s intimidating…Sometimes I was just terrified. Like a cat on a raft…”You can’t do me do it.'”
“I would have fired myself several times during rehearsals because I was so scared, oh my God,” she adds. “I managed to pull myself together, but it took me a while.”
But while filming was a grueling experience for Reese, she’s proud to take on such a “complex” role.
“It wasn’t like there was a lack of roles being offered to me,” Reese says bluntly of her struggle for the role of Chery Strayed. “It was the dynamic aspect of playing a really interesting, complicated person who wasn’t readily available. Honestly, I don’t know a woman who isn’t complicated. It’s weird that you don’t see a lot of women complicated in the movies. that is, complex, should I say.'”
This notion of being “America’s Sweetheart” obviously bothers the Southern star, who also addresses Glamor magazine in another new interview that she doesn’t identify with the title.
“I definitely didn’t identify as anyone’s sweetheart,” she says. “I’m friendly, but I don’t think I’m nice. I’m honest.”
But taking on one of her toughest roles to date and being happily married with three children, Reese is certainly in a great place in life, which she is sharing with age.
“I don’t think I understood [in my twenties] that no one else makes you whole,” she says. “You have to take responsibility for your own happiness. It took me until I was about 31 to know… No relationship, no kids, nothing is going to make you a happy person.”
That being said, she couldn’t be happier with her husband, CAA agent Jim Toth, to whom she has been married since March 2011. She was previously married to actor Ryan Phillippe, whom she divorced in 2006 after nine years together.
“Well, I have to say a very healing part of my life is my wonderful husband, Jim,” she exclaims. “It’s really wonderful to be with someone who supports me, who loves me, who is my number one fan. It’s such an amazing experience. You have to be ready for these things. I had to be in a place where I felt all those things about me.”
