Reese Witherspoon isn't happy about her “likeable” image

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Reese Witherspoon isn't happy about her “likeable” image

By Stylist Team

Updated 8 years ago

Reese Witherspoon was well on her way towards shedding her ‘America's Sweetheart’ image last year when she was arrested for arguing with a state trooper after what she admitted was “one drink too many” - saying of the incident: “I think it was a moment where people realized that I wasn’t exactly what they thought I was.”

Now promoting a challenging new role in Wild, the actress says she's tired of being typecast as “likeable.”

“I’ve sat through millions of development meetings where people are like: ‘We don’t want Reese to say profanity. We don’t want her to have sex. We don’t want her to take drugs,’” Reese, 38, said in a recent interview with the New York Times. “I didn’t really feel the constraints of it until about three years ago, where I realized, ‘I’m not this.’ I’m a complex person that has so many different aspects in my personality. But somehow, I have this reductive experience where I’m put into this tiny little box.”

Asked to elaborate, she added: “Likable... Can we scrub the likable box?”

The actress was arrested in 2013 and charged with disorderly conduct after an exchange with police in which she told an officer, “OK, you're about to find out who I am.” She was fined and later apologised for being “disrespectful to the officer who was just doing his job.”

Reese has been tipped for an Oscar nod for Wild, out in the UK in January, which sees her character embark on the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail, and involves sex scenes and depictions of drug use, as well as physically-demanding stunts.

She previously said of the filming: “The sex scenes were the hardest thing for me to do. I've never had to do anything like that in my entire life. I had to do all the parts of the movie, the parts that made me feel uncomfortable too, because it is about emotional honesty.”

Images: foxsearch/Everett/Rex

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