Reese Witherspoon may finally be returning to the awards circuit after several years away, thanks to two films she appeared in that played at the Toronto International Film Festival - Wild and The Good Lie. Her performance in Wild, Jean-Marc Vallee's follow-up to last year’s Dallas Buyers Club, in particular, is getting some notice.
Wild is a particularly unglamourous role and is based on Cheryl Strayed’s real journey along Pacific Crest Trail. In fact, Witherspoon told The Hollywood Reporter that Vallee made sure she didn’t wear makeup in the film.
“It was raw. I'd never seen myself in a movie like that before,” she said of the Fox Searchlight film.
She later told reporters that the backpack she wore got incredibly heavy, but it was all for the sake of realism. “It changed the way I walked. It dug into my shoulders and I saw how quickly I got tired,” she said.
Witherspoon also spoke about why she has been turning to producing her films herself in recent years, notes The New York Times.
“I suddenly started to realize that scripts were not that great, particularly for women,” Witherspoon said. She decided that if no one else was going to come up with these roles, “who’s going to do it?”
In addition to producing Wild, Witherspoon is a producer on David Fincher’s Gone Girl, which is also expected to be a player during the awards season.
In The Good Lie, Witherspoon plays a Kansas city counselor who helps four Sudanese refugees acclimate to North American life. The film was directed by Philippe Falardeau of Quebec, who told The Canadian Press that he was surprised Witherspoon would take the supporting part.
“I think she understood her role in that film. Warner Brothers doesn't. She's on the poster,” Falardeau noted. While he seemed critical of the way Warner Bros. is marketing the movie, he’s certainly happy to have a big studio supporting the film.
“Today my message is, the story of the Lost Boys is worth sending out in the world and Warner Brothers can certainly do that at a scale that I couldn't have with my local distributor in Quebec, if the film had been done just in Quebec,” the director noted.
image courtesy of Dara Kushner/INFphoto.com
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