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Reese Witherspoon’s divorce from Ryan Phillippe didn’t just shake up her personal life. It sent her career into a tailspin. The Legally Blonde star once admitted that the split left her struggling to find passion in her work, and for a while, Hollywood just wasn’t buying what she was selling.
The Legally Blonde star and Phillippe tied the knot in 1999 after a whirlwind romance. She charmed her future husband at her 21st birthday party, telling him, “I think you’re my birthday present.” But their love story didn’t last. The pair divorced in 2008, and while neither spilled all the details, rumors swirled about infidelity and professional jealousy. Phillippe acknowledged the speculation but shut down easy explanations.
“I certainly understand the level of interest that comes along with a public marriage, and with being married to someone like Reese, who so many people love with good reason. People want answers,” Phillippe once told W (via People). “But I think sometimes they wouldn’t be happy with what the answers would be.”
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Regardless of the reason, the breakup hit both stars hard. Phillippe admitted he could “barely function” for months. Witherspoon, on the other hand, saw her once-golden career take a nosedive. “You know, you can’t really be very creative when you feel like your brain is scrambled eggs,” Witherspoon once told 60 Minutes (via People). “I was just kind of floundering career-wise cause I wasn’t making things I was passionate about, I was just kinda working. It was really clear the audiences weren’t responding to anything I was putting out there.”
The low point? A brutal article in The New Yorker labeled her, along with Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson, washed up. The sting was real for a woman who’d once been one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. But that wasn’t the end of her story. Witherspoon’s second marriage to talent agent Jim Toth in 2011 gave her new perspective on her first divorce. “I was hard on myself when I got divorced. And until I got remarried, I don’t think I realized how stressed I was,” Witherspoon once told Marie Claire. “I feel so much relief. I don’t think I recognized how anxious I was about being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It’s not easy on anybody.”
Her marriage to Toth lasted over a decade, but even that chapter ended in 2023. This time, though, Witherspoon handled the separation differently. She wasn’t about to let the tabloids tell her story. “When I was divorced before, the tabloid media got to tell people how I was feeling or how I was processing, and it felt very out of control,” she said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. Now, she was in charge of her own narrative. “To be able to talk to people directly about what’s going on in my life… it feels much more authentic.”
Divorce wasn’t the end for Reese Witherspoon. It wasn’t even a roadblock. It was just part of her journey. From career slumps to public scrutiny, she faced it all and emerged stronger. Hollywood might have once doubted her, but she reminded everyone why she was a powerhouse. The slump? Just a detour on her way back to the top.
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