Reese Witherspoon, 49, is an Oscar-winning actor and a leading Hollywood producer. She says the relentless pressure she put on herself is the reason behind her professional success.
“I was probably successful because I had so much anxiety. They go hand in hand,” Witherspoon told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview published Monday.
“I had pressured myself to extreme levels to show up at work in a perfect way. We all now know — perfect is not attainable. It’s not sustainable. I stressed myself out in service of my job, and it got me really, really far. I’m rewarded for my anxiety and perfectionism,” she said.
But now that she’s getting older, the “Legally Blonde” star says she’s learning to slow down and be content with what she’s already achieved.
“I mean, I’ve had an abundance of good fortune, great work opportunities, and worked with some of the greatest people on Earth,” she said.
Witherspoon began acting at a young age, landing her first major acting role in “The Man in the Moon” in 1991. She went on to star in a string of films over the next two decades before turning her attention to producing, with notable projects including “Gone Girl” and “Wild.”
In 2016, she founded a media company called Hello Sunshine. Since 2019, she’s been producing and starring in Apple TV’s “The Morning Show,” alongside Jennifer Aniston.
Despite her box-office success, Witherspoon said that others in the industry still doubted her abilities.
“Even when ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Wild’ had grossed over $600 million at the box office and I got three Oscars, it still wasn’t a guarantee that I could get things made,” Witherspoon said. “People were still questioning whether I was a real producer or was just doing it as a vanity project.”
This isn’t the first time that Witherspoon has talked about how anxiety has impacted her work.
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Speaking on the “Las Culturistas” podcast in September, Witherspoon told hosts Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang that she’s “a high-anxiety person.”
“It can be really highly performance-based,” Witherspoon said. “Like, you have to perform. You have to show up, which is a lot of my anxiety. I used to have panic attacks, bad panic attacks, like crying.”
A representative for Witherspoon did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.
She also isn’t the only Hollywood star who’s credited anxiety with pushing them forward.
In January 2024, Emma Stone told NPR that she sees her anxiety “as a kind of a superpower.”
“And if you can use it for productive things, if you can use all of those feelings in those synapses that are firing for something creative, or something that you’re passionate about, or something interesting, anxiety is like rocket fuel because you can’t help but get out of bed and do things, do things, do things because you’ve got all of this energy within you,” Stone said.
Speaking to People in May 2024, Ryan Reynolds said he’s learned to use his anxiety as an advantage at work.
“My job benefits greatly,” Reynolds said. “People who have anxiety are constantly thinking into the future. You’re constantly, ‘What if this happens? What if that happens?’ You’re always telling yourself stories.”
