Reese Witherspoon feels that Hollywood broke her almost a year ago
Actress Reese Witherspoon may have a lot of star power, though she is only now beginning to realise the baggage that comes with such power. Getting teary eyed and emotional, Witherspoon felt like she had been broken a year ago due to her excessive Hollywood work.
“I’ve been trying really hard to find balance outside of work. I’m a person who fills my schedule with business, so that I feel less alone or less nervous or less unsettled,” Witherspoon shared at her company Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away event in Los Angeles, according to Eonline.
The ‘Legally Blonde’ actress began to feel that her Hollywood schedule was mechanising her. She said: “I started to realise that isn’t going to work for me. About a year ago, I was like, ‘I was a robot and the robot broke.’ I cried and cried.”
Witherspoon said she texted friend Tracy Ellis Ross to help process the revelation. “It actually makes me feel very vulnerable sharing that with y’all, but I think it’s important,” the Oscar winner continued while tearing up onstage.
“We hold up so much for so many. My beautiful friend Cleo Wade just wrote this gorgeous poem… about the glue in people’s lives. And sometimes you are the glue in everybody’s life, whether it’s at work or being a mom or being a partner, but who is holding you together, you know? It’s really important to remember. I burst into tears when I read it, because I didn’t feel like I was taking very good care of myself, and I wasn’t asking other people for help,” she continued.
The Reese’s Book Club founder, who revealed her breakup with husband Jim Toth in March, shared later in the discussion some of the ways she’s learned more about herself over the last 30 years, in the hope of inspiring others.
“I feel like I’ve learned a lot,” the 47-year-old noted, “because I did the work—the hard work—in my early 20s and reading every book and every self-help book and going to therapy and really trying to understand myself and forgive the parts of myself that were broken and the parts of myself where I felt like a failure, because it was a huge part of it.”
She added: “Instead of thinking of it as a failure, I think, ‘Gosh, I’ve learned so much from that moment.’ And I don’t blame others: I just reward myself for the hard things that little Reese went through.”