Reese Witherspoon

I read while the kids play. I can see them from the kitchen window. And I’m a fast reader.

I’d love to do a musical, either in film or on stage.

I love books.

I don’t think these women are stupid. I think they’re selling a personality that’s very marketable: Wouldn’t it be fun if we were all gorgeous and didn’t have a care? But creating a cultural icon out of someone who goes, “I’m stupid, isn’t it cute?” makes me want to throw daggers at them! I want to say to them, “My grandma did not fight for what she fought for, and my mother did not fight for what she fought for, so you can start telling women it’s fun to be stupid.” Saying that to young women, little girls, my daughter? It’s not OK.

I do think things were meant to happen. I’m just this little girl from Tennessee, and here I am today. I think a lot of things are just out of your hands.

[on “Pleasantville”] We were thrilled for just the three nominations we got, but obviously it’s a little sad. I went through so many press junkets with people saying they loved it. And Joan Allen was robbed but she can’t get nominated every year. She’s an inspiration for every young actress. She has that calm and reserve about herself and makes you think she appreciates the normal things of everyday. Then she transforms into this character that’s so different.

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.

A lot of them also looked a little further down the line in the future than we did. We always did everything out of Level Cross (N.C.) in the backyard and we were fairly successful with the thing. Then it started being a bigger and bigger business. It started going and bringing more people in, more money, more technology, that kind of stuff. We still sat there in the backyard. By the time we got ready to do something about it, we were so far behind on our money and our engineering and all that stuff it’s just taken us a little time to get going.

[on quitting smoking] I quit smoking four months ago and since then I have been biting-chewing-fidgeting with anything that isn’t nailed down. I quit cold turkey. I was up to two packs a day, I’m coughing, my eyes are red, I don’t have energy, I’m not even enjoying it, so I just said, ‘That’s it.’ I think it might’ve been easier if I went with Nicorette or one of those supplements, but I just don’t get that. Let’s see, I’m addicted to something, so I know! Let’s pop some pills to get over it! Yeah, that makes sense. But now I find myself in conversations where people are looking at me and I’m salivating all over myself. This is how pathetic and sad it is: you start thinking, ‘Who am I without a cigarette in my hand?’

I knew I could always work harder and be better and show I’m more prepared. I had a whole science to, like, how you have to arrive 17 minutes early to something. If you’re 20 minutes early, that means you’re too eager, but 17 minutes gives you time to, like, settle, sign in, use the ladies’ room, have some water, and get comfortable.

When in trouble, take a bath and wash your hair.

I was labeled a ‘theatre type’ in high school, which made it hard to fit in and feel part of things.

When I go to see Iron Man 3, I’m not as enthralled as I was when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai.

You haven’t been around here long, have you.

The death penalty is like the McRib. When you can’t have it, it seems so tantalizing. But when they bring it back, you think, ‘Wow, this is ethically wrong’.

[On drum machines] Fantastic to write with. They have their place, they’re terribly useful to the musician, but they’re just another tool. They never will replace a good drummer. A lot of the bands that use them, I call them typewriter bands because basically they program the sample sounds with no real dynamics, and that dynamics is very important. And the records come out sounding very flat and very 2-dimensional whereas something with real dynamics and a good drummer can add another dimension – depth – to the band and that’s why bands that play together when they’re actually making the record will always sound better.

I don’t really see the point in washing your hair. If you don’t care if your hair’s clean or not then why would you wash it?

It hits you in small ways and large, doesn’t it? For instance, had you considered the fact that portraits of Trump are going to be hanging in our airports? Uh… or that the man who disparaged a Gold Star family will now be expected to comfort the families of fallen soldiers? And maybe you’ve tried to make yourself feel better, fantasizing that he might Google how much does the president get paid?, get depressed, and then resign. But that is when you remember Mike fucking Pence, who might be even worse, because he looks like he’s from the 1950s, but he thinks like he’s from the 1650s. Oh, what’s that, you say? Her pregnancy was terminated before birth? Well, clearly she’s a witch. Hold a funeral for the fetus and throw the mother in a lake.

The things that people do come so easy to me. I could do it in my sleep. But I’m such a perfectionist that when something is too easy to me, I actually feel guilty.

So, Alec Baldwin; great actor or greatest actor? I’m gonna say “greatest actor”; Greatest…living…American…actor…in…the Baldwin family…by a mile.

I wrote my own verses. Anything I did, I wrote myself.