Reese Witherspoon is getting candid about her choice to get married to actor Ryan Phillippe
Reese Witherspoon is getting candid about her choice to get married to ex-husband Ryan Phillippe at 23.
In an interview on ITV’s Lorraine, shared on Thursday, the Big Little Lies star hinted she may have been too young when she wed the father of her first two children.
Speaking about her new film, Home Again, Witherspoon said of her character, “It’s about that next chapter in your life. What do you do when you get to 40 and you’ve made a decision when you were 25 to get married and have kids?”
Witherspoon and Phillippe first met in 1997 at the starlet’s 21st birthday party, they married just two years later. They share two children together: Ava, 18 and Deacon, 13.
Witherspoon quickly made the connection to her own life, admitting, “I got married when I was 23 and I had two kids by the time I was 27.”
Witherspoon and Phillippe divorced in 2007. “I don’t know, sometimes it’s good to know yourself [first]," she said before clarifying, “I would never change anything.”
While the Oscar and Emmy-winning actress wouldn’t have done anything differently in her life, that doesn’t mean she wants her 18-year-old daughter to follow that same path.
“I’ve said to my daughter, I think you know, at 25 you start to know yourself a little bit better,” Witherspoon advised.
Despite the split, both Witherspoon and Phillippe have remained close and successfully co-parent their two children. Witherspoon later married talent agent Jim Toth in 2011 and had her third child, 5-year-old son, Tennessee.
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Witherspoon goes on to reflect about the plot of Home Again in which her character starts a budding romance with a much younger man.
“I couldn’t think of another movie where the woman was older and the guy was younger, other than The Graduate,” she said of her Hallie Meyers-Shyer directed film. “We always see older men with younger women on screen,” the actor-producer added.
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