32 MAY 2017
»ABOVE FROM LEFT: Reese in Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix. On the set of Big Little Lies with Shailene Woodley and Nicole Kidman.
As Cheryl Strayed in the physically and emotionally challenging Wild. TOP: At a celebrity event in Los Angeles last year.would be for her to juggle motherhood
and acting – and, in particular, her
desire to break out of her bubbly, good-
girl screen persona.
Highs and lows
Feeling condemned to rom-com hell,
Reese finally earned a measure of
respect with her performance as June
Carter, Johnny Cash’s hard-suffering
wife in Walk the Line.
It was also at that point her
world began falling apart. First, her
marriage to Ryan came to an abrupt
end in 2009 – reportedly over his
chronic infidelity, albeit never directly
confirmed by Reese – and then she
found herself in a creative limbo that
paralleled several years of personal
reassessment and self-questioning.
“It was a hard time for me,” says
Reese. “It was like I had reached a
turning point where you need to take
stock of your life and where you’re
headed. But those kinds of times are
important and they really do make
you feel stronger and give you a better
sense of who you are.”
After a brief relationship with actor
Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese eventually
found happiness with Hollywood
talent agent Jim Toth, whom she
married in March 2011. Their son,
Tennessee, was born in 2013.
“It happened out of the blue,” Reese
says of meeting Jim for the first time
in a bar. They began dating but it took
Jim almost a year to convince Reese –
still feeling the scars from the collapse
of her marriage to Ryan – to marry him.
“Jim said, ‘I’m gonna show you
every day what a good partner is, what
a good person is. I’m going to take
care of you. I’m gonna do this so much
that you’re gonna get used to it.’ I was
like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I’ve
never had anybody like that in my life.”
Jim has also supported Reese’s
efforts to redefine herself as a dramatic
actress. She credits him with helping
her regain her acting mojo. “He said:
‘You should produce movies. You read
more books than anybody I know. You
should just buy some of them and turn
them into films.’”
Gone Girl was the first project she
undertook, buying the rights to the
phenomenally successful Gillian Flynn
novel before it was published. She
went on to produce and star inWild,
based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling
2012 book about her extraordinary
1800km trek along the Pacific Crest
Trail on the American west coast.
It would prove to be the most
challenging role of Reese’s career,
involving nudity, rough sex, and the
physical strain of shooting out in the
wilderness and carrying around a 30kg
backpack for much of the film.
She threw everything she had into
the role, ultimately earning an Oscar
nomination. It was, she believes now,
the kind of test she was looking for
and was the culmination of many
years involved in “shedding fears” and
breaking down a lot of psychological
barriers, including the sex and nudity
the part required.
“It was tough for me... I nearly
backed out of the film when I started
thinking more and more about how