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Actress’s all-American appeal helps film get message across, director says
Before her latest film, if anyone had asked Reese Witherspoon what the term “extraordinary rendition” meant, she might have answered with a blank stare.
The words could be bureaucratese for something as innocuous as a tax deduction. But as Witherspoon’s Rendition spells out darkly and melodramatically, the term actually stands for a U.S. government practice of transferring terrorism suspects to other countries, where their interrogations could subject them to abuse and torture.
“I don’t think I realized what the term was called,” Witherspoon told The Associated Press at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, where Rendition played in advance of its theatrical release Friday. “The term is not really in the popular vernacular.
“It sounds like public-policy rigmarole. It doesn’t sound like anything that you would connect with the torture and detainment of innocent people.”
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Reese Witherspoon made her first film, The Man In The Moon, aged 14. Last year, she won an Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk The Line and later separated from her husband Ryan Phillippe. Her new film Rendition is about the transfer and harsh interrogation of US non-citizens in countries where they are suspected of terrorism.
Did Meryl Streep’s involvement in this film help attract you to the project?
Of course. I was nervous the day I had to work with her. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it but she was wonderful. She’s completely intimidating, completely professional and had a thousand ideas – but as soon as you cut, she’s the nicest, warmest, funniest person.
Who else has intimidated you on set?
Matthew Broderick when I did Election. I’d grown up watching his films and always thought he was so funny. He had that wonderful wry comic wit. I was more scared to meet Matthew than anyone I’ve ever worked with. He was an icon and I had a crush on him when I was little. I used to think he was so cute.
Did you tell him?
Of course not! And I certainly never told his wife.
Have you ever felt prejudice in your own life, as you and your husband do in Rendition?
Yes, when I went to Stanford University when I was 19. I’d already done several films and I really felt this prejudice against me because I was an actress. Some of the students thought I’d only got in there because I was an actress but I applied the same way as everyone else under my real name, which is not the same as my acting name.
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The Morning Show (2019)
