Reese Witherspoon

I love books.

Being a Southern person and a blonde, it’s not a good combination. Immediately, when people meet you, they think of you as not being smart.

The thing is, we’re not extravagant people. It’s just unbelievable the amounts of money we make. But we don’t spend it. It’s too scary to spend it.

[On roles resembling the title character in ‘Penelope’] I like this girl because she is a bit of a bad-ass. I grew up watching movies with people like Barbara Stanwyck, and sometimes I get frustrated that there aren’t a lot of great female characters out there that young women can look at and go, ‘I want to be like that’. I go to movies and yell at the women on-screen, ‘Shoot him; just shoot him.’ I mean, why why does the guy always have to shoot him?

When I was a question on Jeopardy!, that’s when I felt famous!

I love to cook comfort food. I’ll make fish and vegetables or meat and vegetables and potatoes or rice. The ritual of it is fun for me, and the creativity of it.

[when asked if she had ever been asked to “sex it up” a little] I’m more of the down-home – I guess, you know, the good-old girl. Being sexy is kind of funny to me. You know, I can get kind of spunky or I can get tough, you know, that kind of tough, sexy look. But sexy? No, I don’t think so. Just what you see is what you get on me. And it’s never been anything of a sexual nature.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to – in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet – very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

As we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls.

Ask a boxer: In the third round, when he hit you from the side on your ear, how did that specifically feel? You wouldn’t ask a boxer that. Because you know they’re there to fight. Meaning now you know I’m here to fight. I’m here to fight for the re-education of what celebrity is.

I like friends who are honest and loyal. They also shouldn’t be afraid to be a kid. I like having fun.

Dictionary.com defines ‘Amy Poehler’ as ‘results not found. I take that as a testament to your uniqueness.’

Gay people don’t actually try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.

When you go to the Oscars, don’t dress like you’re never going to go anywhere again. Don’t take such a big swing.

I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley – the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you’re in your Vegas years. You’ve squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you’re wheezing your way through ‘Love Me Tender’ and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you’re still the King.

Everyone asks me about being so worried or thinking about existence as if I’m the only person who can’t understand why a tree grows the way it does or why a person is in power when they’re not that great. These are questions everyone has.

It’s an idiotic thing that you have to be a college graduate to be an agent.

People want to try and move you into a place where you can be easily identifiable by every woman in America – to be this very likable woman in a romantic comedy. And it’s really hard for me. I just don’t see myself as the girl that everybody likes. I never have been and I don’t know how to be that person.

I’m just a public-schoolboy. I’ve got a degree. I’m from a middle-class family in Devon. I’ve got no story.

Whenever I have bid a hasty goodbye to a loved one, I’ve always made sure that my record collection was safely stored away in the boot of the car….Sometimes the parting was so fast, I was not able to get them into alphabetical order, but I still got away with my records, that was essential.

What I recall for the first two years is my daughter not really knowing who I was and getting rather agitated when I came back off tour, as she thought I’d come to rob the house.