Reese Witherspoon is known for starring in many romantic comedies which included the likes of Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama.
But fellow star Gwyneth Paltow thought Witherspoon was better than some of the other romcoms that she starred in.
Why Gwyneth Paltrow was disappointed in Reese Witherspoon doing these romantic comedies
Paltrow didn’t mince words when it came to discussing the types of roles available to women actors in the prior decades of Hollywood. Earlier in her career, the Se7en star made it a point to star in only the types of movies she wanted to do. Even if those types of films offered Paltrow small pay days.
“I basically stopped making money from acting in 2002. All the things I’ve done since then have been things I’ve really wanted to do, and I have not made money from them,” Paltrow once told The Guardian.
Paltrow looked at what she felt stars like Witherspoon were doing with their careers as examples of what she wouldn’t. She felt Witherspoon doing so many romcoms illustrated the kinds of characters female actors were expected to play. But Paltrow was adamant that a performer of Witherspoon’s caliber deserved better.
“Even actresses that you really admire, like Reese Witherspoon, you think, another romantic comedy? You know,” Paltrow said. “You see her in something like Walk the Line and think, God, you’re so great. And then you think, why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies? But of course it’s for money and status. I just think, wouldn’t it be great if all of those movies people went to see were about real women?”
Reese Witherspoon felt that modern romantic comedies needed to change
Witherspoon once asserted that she kept coming back to romantic comedies mainly because she was a fan of the genre. It’d been a while since she’d last dabbled in the rom-coms. But the Big Little Lies actor wasn’t necessarily trying to distance herself from them.
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“I didn’t stop on purpose,” Witherspoon recently told Vanity Fair. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop making romantic comedies. They are very important to me. It’s my favorite genre because it makes people feel good.”
But she did feel that rom-coms in general could’ve updated with the tastes of the movie-going audience.
“The romantic comedy as it existed 15 years ago just isn’t viable. I think people know that every life doesn’t have a happy ending, and they’re not going to be force-fed some idea of what romance is,” Witherspoon said in a 2017 interview with The New York Times. “Also, people know their lives aren’t necessarily defined by one romantic relationship solving all their problems. So there’s that reality check.”
Reese Witherspoon recently shared what separated ‘Your Place or Mine’ from past romantic comedies
Your Place or Mine was a Netflix rom-com Witherspoon recently starred in alongside Ashton Kutcher. The movie saw the two playing friends that temporarily switched houses to discover what they might have been missing in their individual lives.
Your Place or Mine was a return to form for Witherspoon, who hadn’t starred in a romantic comedy for six years before then. Witherspoon was more than excited about the feature because it was the exact type of fresh rom-com the star was looking for.
“Over the years, I feel like it’s been hard — audiences are a little bit more cynical about [rom-coms],” Witherspoon said in an interview with Variety. “I think the great thing about this one is it’s so grounded in reality. Our characters are so flawed in who they are, because really our only obstacle is ourselves. We can’t get together because we are so narrow-minded about each other and we don’t see the bigger perspective that we have so much more in common than we really think we do.”
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