Reese Witherspoon

Actor

Name at birth: Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon

Actress Reese Witherspoon won the Academy Award as best actress for playing gospel singer June Carter Cash in the 2005 movie Walk the Line. Witherspoon had already made a name for herself with roles in a series of unsettling dramas including Fear (1996, with Mark Wahlberg), Freeway (1996), Cruel Intentions (1999, with Ryan Phillippe), and American Psycho (2000). As a comic actress, she won top reviews as a scheming high school politician in the 2000 comedy Election (with Matthew Broderick) and the next year had a hit with Legally Blonde, starring as a ditzy Harvard law student. Walk the Line, the movie that won her the Oscar, was a biography of June Carter Cash's husband Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix). Witherspoon's other films include Sweet Home Alabama (2002, featuring Dakota Fanning), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) and Just Like Heaven (2005, with Mark Ruffalo).

Extra credit: Witherspoon married Ryan Phillippe, her Cruel Intentions co-star, on 5 June 1999. They have a daughter Ava (b. 1999) and a son Deacon (b. 2003). Witherspoon filed for divorce in November of 2006... Some sources report incorrectly that Witherspoon was born in Tennessee; Witherspoon's family has lived in Tennessee, but she was born in New Orleans.