Big Little Wrongs Reese's Personal Fight

She’s on a Mission to Empower Women

- Frances White

Reese Witherspoon was at her wits’ end. She had an Oscar under her belt, yet she was spending her days reading through weak and demeaning scripts – all that seemed to be out there for female actors.

“I was sick of making movies where I was the only female lead on set,” she admits. “I was sick of seeing scripts where there was one female role, badly written, and yet every actress in town wanted the part because there was nothing else.”

She also began a game with her daughter Ava (19), where every time they watched a movie and heard the female lead say, “What do we do now?!” they’d let each other know. They kept hearing the line over and over again, from characters playing the girlfriend or wife in distress.

“These female characters aren’t in charge of their own futures,” Reese laments. “They’re relying on someone else to make the decision for them in times of crisis.”

Women deserve more, she decided. So Reese (43) set about making her own movies, pouring her own cash into a production company, Pacific Standard. The avid reader began buying up the rights to her favourite books that featured strong female leads. Gone Girl, an adaption of Gillian Flynn’s novel, was a box-office hit, and she followed it up by producing and starring in Wild, adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir, which was another instant hit.

She’s since made a slew of movies that put women front and centre, challenging the roles in which females are traditionally seen. And now, under her new company Hello Sunshine, she also has dozens of female-focused projects in the works, branching out beyond films to TV series, a book club, podcasts, a mentor programme for aspiring female filmmakers and much more.