The actress shared 'it wasn't a particularly great experience' in a new interview Wednesday.
Reese Witherspoon is peeling back the curtain on regrets over a past role.
In a new interview with Harper's Bazaar, she opened up about feeling uncomfortable while filming a sex scene in the 1996 psychological thriller, Fear, which co-starred Mark Wahlberg. The scene in question featured Witherspoon and Wahlberg's characters, Nicole and David, respectively, having sex while on a roller-coaster ride.
"I didn't have control over it," the Morning Show actress said looking back on the scene, which showed her character having an orgasm. Witherspoon revealed in the interview she had requested a stunt double to be used for the intimate scenes.
"It wasn't explicit in the script that that's what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no," Witherspoon recalled. (The movie was directed by James Foley.) "It wasn't a particularly great experience."
More than two decades later, Witherspoon said she's "not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative."
"It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking," the 47-year-old explained. "I think it's another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze."
Elsewhere in the interview, Witherspoon discussed her divorce from Jim Toth, whom she was married to for more than 11 years, saying it was important for her to control her own narrative. The couple announced in a joint statement in March they were splitting.
"It’s interesting what happened to me," Witherspoon said. "When I was divorced before [from Ryan Phillippe], the tabloid media got to tell people how I was feeling or how I was processing, and it felt very out of control."
"To be able to talk to people directly about what’s going on in my life and just share it in the way that I share great professional experiences or personal experiences, it feels much more authentic to be able to say things in my own voice and not let somebody else control what’s happening," she continued. "Then, of course, there’s speculation, but I can’t control that."
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