Toronto: Reese Witherspoon Talks Female Empowerment, Saying No to Sexual Shame

Wild wasn’t just the most physically challenging role of Reese Witherspoon’s career. It also offered the actress an opportunity to have a frank discussion about sexuality with her 15-year-old daughter.

“There’s a lot of explicit sex scenes in this movie,” Witherspoon said during a Mavericks conversation Sunday night at the Toronto Film Festival. “And she’s like, ‘Oh no!’ ”

In a wide-ranging discussion, which took place at Glenn Gould Studio, the actress talked about tackling Jean-Marc Vallee’s film — based on a best-selling memoir by Cheryl Strayed — as well her role in another Toronto film, Philippe Falardeau’s The Good Lie.

She said there’s a lesson in Wild, which centers on a sexually daring woman who overcomes a string of personal tragedies by hiking more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. The lesson: Young girls are conditioned to feel shame about their sexuality, and that’s not OK.

“It’s such an important message about female sexuality,” she said. “We kissed that guy or we had sex with that dude in college. We’re totally ashamed of so many things. I think this movie says, ‘That’s OK. Maybe I was meant to sleep with all those guys. Maybe I wanted to. Maybe if I could go back and do it all again, I’d do the same thing.’ It’s a total liberation, especially for young women.”

Witherspoon talked about her own youth as the daughter of a doctor father and a nurse mother and how she thought she was destined to be a doctor until she saw a casting notice at the age of 14 for Robert Mulligan’s The Man in the Moon. She landed the part, which led eventually to her breakout role as Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne’s Election, which she dubbed “a huge flop.”

“Election cost $10 million and made $11 million,” Witherspoon said. “It was actually a huge flop. A critical success but a huge flop.”

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The Hollywood Reporter has a new article about three of Hollywood’s current most popular authors and the stars who are bringing their books to the big screen. Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl – which Reese bought the film rights too – is one of the authors, and poses alongside Reese for a photoshoot for the publication.

See the photo in our Gallery and read the blurb that came with it below. Read THR’s interview with Gillian Flynn at their website (there is no mention of Reese in it).

Gillian Flynn and Reese Witherspoon, Stephenie Meyer and ‘The Host’ Cast: Authors With Their Stars

Three of The Hollywood Reporter’s most powerful authors pose with the talent who will bring their characters to life.

‘Gone Girl’

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl drew the attention of Reese Witherspoon, who read the novel before it was even published on a recommendation from screenwriter Leslie Dixon. Witherspoon says she was impressed with the way Flynn was able to effectively tell the story from both male and female perspectives while also employing a nonlinear structure. “It’s just an incredible feat that Gillian was able to accomplish,” she says. “You really can’t anticipate where it’s going, but it’s one of those books you can’t stop reading.” The adaptation rights went to Fox in a summer auction for a reported $1.5 million; Witherspoon, Bruna Papandrea and Dixon are producing.

In a whopping summer auction that reached seven figures, 20th Century Fox acquired Gone Girl, the Gillian Flynn novel that was just published by Crown and is atop The New York Times Bestseller List for the second week in a row. The book will be produced by Pacific Standard’s Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea, along with Leslie Dixon. Flynn will write the screenplay. Other studios including Universal were in on the action and I think the Fifty Shades Of Grey action has elevated interest in bestsellers geared to female readers.

A woman disappears on the day of her fifth anniversary and all roads point to her husband as the killer. Flynn, who has three novels on the bestseller lists all at once, has two other movie projects in the works. Dark Places has Amy Adams attached to star, with Gilled Paquet-Brenner directing and her first novel, Sharp Objects, was optioned by Alliance with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum producing. Fox’s New York office, headed by Drew Reed, was all over this book. Reed and Chris Goldberg teamed with Peter Kang to bring it in. It was sold by Smiley Group’s Shari Smiley, the former longtime CAA agent who teamed with Stephanie Rostan of Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency. Smiley also sold the screen rights to the Cheryl Strayed book Wild, which currently sits atop the Non Fiction bestseller list. Pacific Standard bought it, with The Kids Are All Right’s Lisa Cholodenko adapting to direct.

– Deadline.com

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