The Sad Truth About Reese Witherspoon's Massive Rise To Fame

Reese Witherspoon has squeezed every drop of opportunity into her proverbial glass of fame. She started her movie career at 14 years old and is now a Hollywood power player, driving small-screen hits like "Big Little Lies," "Daisy Jones and the Six," and "The Morning Show" with her production company, Hello Sunshine. And with a net worth in the hundreds of millions, Witherspoon is a clear industry success story. But the multi-hyphenate credits her stratospheric triumphs to poor mental health.

"I was probably successful because I had so much anxiety. They go hand in hand," she told Harper's Bazaar in her November 2025 cover story. "I had pressured myself to extreme levels to show up at work in a perfect way." She alluded to her past struggles with anxiety in a 2021 interview with Tracee Ellis Ross for Interview Magazine, in which she revealed that she had panic attacks on the set of her 2014 film "Wild." "I don't know if I'll ever work that hard again, but it changed me on a cellular level," she said. Witherspoon was later nominated for Best Leading Actress at the 2014 Academy Awards.

Though her anxiety and perfectionism paid off in ways of fame and success, Witherspoon noted in her Harper's Bazaar interview that she now understands that maintaining that mindset is unrealistic. Witherspoon said she has settled with the idea that she doesn't need to strive for flawlessness and that she is acceptable just as she is.

As someone who has seemingly dealt with anxiety for most of her life, Reese Witherspoon has some tricks up her sleeve on how to calm yourself down when thoughts are spinning. Her biggest piece of advice, which she shared on Instagram in March 2025, is to "get out of your head and into your hands." She cited a few creative activities that could ease anxiety, saying: "It doesn't matter if you're making chocolates, you're picking flowers, you're painting by numbers, you're cooking a meal for your family or friends. Get busy doing something."

Martha Beck, a sociologist and author — whom Witherspoon mentioned in her social media post — spoke to The Los Angeles Times about how anxiety and creativity correlate. She said that because external forces are often the cause of anxiety, it is hard to calm oneself just by thinking or meditating, "unless we have a really hard anchor into something else. The something else is creativity." She noted that creative tasks will tap into the problem-solving part of the brain. "And that opens you up," she said, adding, "where anxiety closes you down and crunches you."