"Reese Witherspoon's big break came in 2001, when she was 25 years old, starring in Legally Blonde as the iconic Elle Woods. But the award-winning actress actually started modeling and doing local TV commercials when she was just 7 years old, and had her first major film role when she was just 14 years old, in 1991, for the coming-of-age drama The Man in the Moon."
"Today, Witherspoon is the founder of media company Hello Sunshine, and is worth about $400 million. She sold her company in 2021 to two former Disney execs for $900 million, but she still oversees operations and remains on the company's board. But she recently said if she had tried to come up as an actor today, she wouldn't have had as much success."
""I don't think my career would be possible," Witherspoon told Bloomberg 's Emily Chang. "It's a different world." Witherspoon's response was to Chang's question regarding how different Witherspoon's career would have been if she had started her career during the age of AI and algorithms. "I see young people and I have so much compassion for young performers and actors because they have to be the producer, the director, they have to shoot their own videos, they have to market themselves," Witherspoon continued. "That's not something that I understood when I was 20 years old.""
"To be sure, Witherspoon also worked incredibly hard as an up-and-coming actress, even attributing her great success to anxiety. "I was probably successful because I had so much anxiety. They go hand in hand," she recently told Harper's Bazaar U.K. "I had pressured myself to extreme levels to show up at work in a perfect way." Witherspoon admits, though, that mentality isn't one to keep. "We all now know, perfect is not attainable. It's not sustainable," she said. "I stressed myself out in service of my job, and it got me really, really far. I'm rewarded for my anxiety and perfectionism.""
Reese Witherspoon began working as a child model and in local TV commercials at seven and landed her first major film role at 14 in The Man in the Moon. Her breakout came at 25 starring as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. She founded Hello Sunshine and sold it in 2021 for $900 million while retaining operational oversight and a board seat, with an estimated net worth of about $400 million. Witherspoon believes modern actors must self-produce, direct, shoot, and market themselves in the age of AI and algorithms, which she feels would have limited her career. She credits anxiety and perfectionism for early success but warns they are unsustainable.
Read at Fortune
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