Reese Witherspoon: the dork who became a media mogul

A decade ago, Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was in the “romcom doldrums”. Now she’s a one-woman conglomerate with a production company and a book club at its core.

Reece Witherspoon
(Image credit: © John Shearer/Getty Images)

Growing up in Nashville in the 1980s, Reece Witherspoon considered herself “a big dork who read loads of books”. That love of stories – and a willingness to bet on herself when the roles dried up – is paying off richly, says Forbes. Last week, Witherspoon scooped a personal $400m after selling a majority stake in her production company, Hello Sunshine, to a Blackstone-backed media entity run by two former Disney executives.

The buyout valued the business at $900m. After a 30-year-long career as an actress and producer, the deal seals her reputation as “one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars” and one of the most powerful players in the entertainment industry.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.