Reese Witherspoon found her greatest success in romantic comedies, but dramas like Walk the Line earned enough acclaim to prove she can do it all. Her latest film, Rendition, may be a tougher sell since there's no rockin' soundtrack to keep things upbeat. She plays a distraught wife searching for her husband who has been secretly kidnapped by the U.S. government for interrogation.
Reese Witherspoon Talks Rendition
"I think it’s a film that has a lot of different, wonderful elements to it," said Witherspoon. "There is definitely a romance to it. There are thriller aspects. It’s not just a film about a message where you sit there for two hours. I think it’s a movie that makes a lot of questions and it really makes you think about a lot of the practices that are going on nowadays and whether or not they are legal or ethical or even constitutional."
Playing a character in such a position gave Witherspoon plenty of chances to exercise her acting chops. "I think the challenge of doing an ensemble piece is that your storyline is so short that every scene you are doing is sort of a pivotal moment in that character’s journey, so everything was sort of heightened and very dramatic."
There was one thing that made the Oscar winner antsy though. "I definitely was nervous the day I had to work with Meryl [Streep]. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it. Definitely that ride to work that day was nerve wracking. But, she was wonderful. She’s completely intimidating, completely professional, had a thousand ideas. Definitely she had a lot of interesting ideas and immediately helped the scene, elevated itself and really, she’s definitely worth every minute of screen time. Always in character and also, as soon as you cut, she’s like the nicest, warmest, funniest person, so she was great."
Rendition
The heart of Witherspoon's storyline is her devotion and love to her husband, who is Muslim. Like many mixed relationships in America, she is suddenly forced to confront an issue that had never seemed like reality before. "I think that is what really drew me to the part. I was excited about sort of imagining a life that is very much like my own, she’s a mother with two children and she’s fallen in love with a Muslim man and married him and as someone who has lived a life without having religious intolerance or racial profiling ever touch her world, suddenly experiencing an extreme of one of those circumstances. I guess all you can do as an actor is imagine it but I think that was one of the more interesting parts of the character that drew me to the script."
Rendition
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