Reese Witherspoon has been inspiring a generation of women ever since she took to the stand as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. As the actress turns 50 this week, she still represents a positive force for women in midlife.
'I like getting older,' she said recently. 'I think it’s great to be wiser and understand your place in a business. I’ve worked really hard to get to that place.' Having navigated divorce, empty nesting, blended families and successful work pivots, she has an unparalleled wisdom at 50 that she is happy to share.
When it comes to her career, Reese got to a stage most midlife women can appreciate, where they think ‘is this it?’ Having made a name for herself in huge hits like Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama, she scooped an Oscar for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, while juggling a young family. But she wanted more. Having felt sidelined for being a woman as she got older, she decided to pivot and become a businesswoman, setting up her own production company to turn her favourite books into female focused movies and TV shows.
Her advice for a well-judged Second Act career pivot is to stop. 'You can’t find your next steps forward when you are racing around and making yourself busy and not giving yourself some space,' she says. 'Ask yourself the question who am I, what do I want in the next chapter of my life to look like? It’s huge. In my 20s I used to try and emulate people - but now I feel my perspective matters.'
Close friendships with Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Aniston, Laura Dern and Nicole Kidman have been pivotal to Reese's success. She subscribes to the theory of friendships as being like a bank account: 'It is a deposit and withdrawal system. A lot of people might want to withdraw, but you need to make sure someone is putting a deposit in your relationship and do the same for them.'
On empty nesting, she said: 'It’s really sad and hard to deal with. I grieved about their going to college and cried in their rooms. Then one day it is kind of... if you did your job, they go. It’s really hard. However, they became these incredible friends.' Her motto: 'I don’t linger on things, I don’t hold grudges, I don’t dwell in the old. Everything is a new day to do something meaningful.'
