Reese Witherspoon

Name at birth: Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon

Actress Reese Witherspoon won the Academy Award as best actress for playing gospel singer June Carter Cash in the 2005 movie Walk the Line. Witherspoon had already made a name for herself with roles in a series of unsettling dramas including Fear (1996, with Mark Wahlberg), Freeway (1996), Cruel Intentions (1999, with Ryan Phillippe), and American Psycho (2000). As a comic actress, she won top reviews as a scheming high school politician in the 2000 comedy Election (with Matthew Broderick) and the next year had a hit with Legally Blonde, starring as a ditzy Harvard law student. Walk the Line, the movie that won her the Oscar, was a biography of June Carter Cash's husband Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix). Witherspoon's other films include Sweet Home Alabama (2002, featuring Dakota Fanning), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) and Just Like Heaven (2005, with Mark Ruffalo).