Reese Witherspoon’s divorce from Ryan Phillippe didn’t just shake up her personal life. It sent her profession right into a tailspin. The Legally Blonde star once admitted that the split left her struggling to search out passion in her work, and for some time, Hollywood just wasn’t buying what she was selling.
The Legally Blonde star and Phillippe tied the knot in 1999 after a whirlwind romance. She charmed her future husband at her twenty first celebration, telling him, “I feel you’re my birthday present.” But their love story didn’t last. The pair divorced in 2008, and while neither spilled all the small print, rumors swirled about infidelity and skilled jealousy. Phillippe acknowledged the speculation but shut down easy explanations.
“I definitely understand the extent of interest that comes together with a public marriage, and with being married to someone like Reese, who so many individuals love with good reason. People want answers,” Phillippe once told W (via People). “But I feel sometimes they wouldn’t be joyful with what the answers could be.”
No matter the rationale, the breakup hit each stars hard. Phillippe admitted he could “barely function” for months. Witherspoon, however, saw her once-golden profession take a nosedive. “, you may’t really be very creative if you feel like your brain is scrambled eggs,” Witherspoon once told 60 Minutes (via People). “I used to be just type of floundering career-wise cause I wasn’t making things I used to be obsessed with, I used to be just kinda working. It was really clear the audiences weren’t responding to anything I used to be putting on the market.”
The low point? A brutal article in The Recent Yorker labeled her, together with Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson, washed up. The sting was real for a lady who’d once been one in all Hollywood’s most bankable stars. But that wasn’t the top of her story. Witherspoon’s second marriage to talent agent Jim Toth in 2011 gave her latest perspective on her first divorce. “I used to be hard on myself once I got divorced. And until I got remarried, I don’t think I spotted how stressed I used to be,” Witherspoon once told Marie Claire. “I feel a lot relief. I don’t think I recognized how anxious I used to be about being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It’s difficult on anybody.”
Her marriage to Toth lasted over a decade, but even that chapter resulted in 2023. This time, though, Witherspoon handled the separation in a different way. She wasn’t about to let the tabloids tell her story. “After I was divorced before, the tabloid media got to inform people how I used to be feeling or how I used to be processing, and it felt very uncontrolled,” she said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. Now, she was in control of her own narrative. “To give you the chance to seek advice from people directly about what’s happening in my life… it feels way more authentic.”
Divorce wasn’t the top for Reese Witherspoon. It wasn’t even a roadblock. It was just a part of her journey. From profession slumps to public scrutiny, she faced all of it and emerged stronger. Hollywood may need once doubted her, but she reminded everyone why she was a powerhouse. The slump? Only a detour on her way back to the highest.
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