Reese Witherspoon says she was deterred from pursuing one particular type of role toward the beginning of her career, despite having firsthand experience in the subject matter.
Witherspoon spoke to The New York Times in a recent interview, reflecting on the period of her career after she became a mother when she was 23.
The actor welcomed two children with her then-husband, Ryan Phillippe: daughter Ava in 1999 and son Deacon in 2003.
When asked if it was difficult to navigate motherhood while her peers were not in the same stage of life, Witherspoon shared the “ironic” advice she was given about her career.
“I was always being told by people in the industry: ‘Don’t play a mom. It’ll make you seem old,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘But, I am a mom.’ There was so much about our business that desexualized you, so you couldn’t be a movie star if you played a mom. And thank goodness, that’s sort of going by the wayside.”
Witherspoon added, “But that was a big part of when I was in my 20s and 30s: Don’t play a mom. No men will desire you, or nobody will want to go see that movie because nobody wants to see a movie about a mom.”
The “Legally Blonde” star also opened up about her experience becoming a mom in her early 20s.
“There was so much I didn’t know,” she said. “And maybe that naïveté was good, because it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do that and have a career.’”
Witherspoon said some people would tell her that becoming a mom would “be really hard on your career,” adding, “There were roles I couldn’t take. I had to have this immediate balance of family and career, being a mom and being a working actress.”
“That’s why it was also scary when ‘Legally Blonde’ became such a big hit,” she said. “I wasn’t going to beg for parts; parts were coming to me. And that almost made it scarier, because I wasn’t picking and choosing what I would reach and strive for. It was more like, what will I not do?”
Witherspoon, who later welcomed son Tennessee with her ex-husband Jim Toth in 2012, has since portrayed a mom on screen several times, including in the movies “Home Again” and “Your Place or Mine” and the shows “Big Little Lies” and “Little Fires Everywhere.”
In recent months, Witherspoon has opened up about her role as a mom off-screen, including how she has raised three children in Hollywood.
Witherspoon shared a post on Instagram in August that featured several throwback photos posing with her children over the years. On the first slide, she wrote, “Someone asked me what raising three kids and building a career in Hollywood looked like…”
“It looked like spending a lot of time in trailers together,” she added. “It looked like always being on the road together. It looked like my kids constantly giving me career advice!”
The actor also highlighted some of the difficult aspects, writing, “It looked really hard sometimes. I’d cry working 14 to 17 hours, sometimes all night long and still woke up early for carpool. I was deliriously tired.”
“It looked like trying to say something positive about my work when I got home at night,” she wrote. “So my kids would know that my work was meaningful to me and could be fun!”
Witherspoon said that while it could be “challenging at times,” being a mom has given her “perspective about what was important in life.”
“Nothing was better than getting to come home and hug them and hear about their day!” she said.