How Tall Is Reese Witherspoon?
Reese Witherspoon's character Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde" showed that powerful figures can come in small packages.
The actor showed her wide range of skills in films like "Election" and her Oscar-winning performance in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line." More than just delighting fans on screen, Witherspoon also transitioned to producing like in 2014 when she and Nicole Kidman optioned the rights to turn the best-selling novel "Big Little Lies" into a TV series, per Deadline. The two went on to star in the show, which earned Witherspoon a best acting nomination at the 2018 Emmy Awards and win for best limited series. Witherspoon expanded her production company to become Hello Sunshine, which went created "Big Little Lies," "The Morning Show," and "Little Fires Everywhere." The three series earned a combined 18 Emmy nominations in 2020, Witherspoon tweeted. As of 2021, her company was valued at a reported $900 million. This helped Witherspoon become the world's richest female actor worth an estimated $400 million, according to Forbes. This all before the third "Legally "Blonde" movie with Witherspoon as a confident and unconventional lawyer, which was scheduled for a May 2022 release date, MGM Studios tweeted.
Not everything about Witherspoon is as big as her success. In a since deleted post, Witherspoon shared the love for one of her three kids, Deacon. She asked her teenage son (via People), "When did you get so tall!?" leading fans to wonder how tall the actor really is.
Reese Witherspoon is a big little actor
In the Season 2 premiere of "Big Little Lies," Reese Witherspoon meets Meryl Streep's character who immediately tells her, "You're very short." Streep backtracks from first saying she didn't mean the comment in a negative way and then says, "I find little people to be untrustworthy." Though the characters are fictional, Streep was at least telling the truth about how Witherspoon is shorter than others in the HBO drama — Nicole Kidman is 5'11", and Streep is 5'6". In fact, Witherspoon is quite short compared to many other actors. In a since-deleted Instagram post (via NPR), Witherspoon shared a photo with her 5'10" co-star Laura Dern and clarified she is 5'2" tall.
Witherspoon has been used to dealing with adversity directed at her height from a young age. When starting out as an actor, she quickly learned to "be focused and tough because it takes a tenacious personality to deal with rejection," per the Daily Mail. Specifically, "When I first came here (to L.A.), all I heard was, 'No, not right – not tall enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough.' But I didn't really care about their opinions. I'm stubborn," Witherspoon explained. Then, as a Hollywood star, "I learned to accept my body for what it is," she told InStyle. This was especially true in fashion choices when Witherspoon discovered that while someone else may have a stunning outfit, "I'm only 5 foot 2; it will not look that good on me."
Reese Witherspoon's height made it tricky to film
With Reese Witherspoon's height, filming alongside other taller actors has sometimes been difficult. For example, she explained that filming the movie "Penelope" became more complicated when she was asked to ride a Vespa scooter. As a result of being "height challenged," Witherspoon told Seventeen, "my feet couldn't touch the ground and they tried to lower it as low as they possibly could, and my feet still couldn't touch the ground on it." To accommodate, the crew hoisted the Vespa onto a rig so she could appear to ride around London with co-star Christina Ricci, who is even shorter than Witherspoon, per NPR.
Witherspoon ran into some unique circumstances while filming the 2008 holiday romantic comedy "Four Christmases." In the film, she is coupled up with Vince Vaughn who towers over her at 6'5" tall. "I stood on a lot of boxes and they had to build ramps that were about the same size as where I should be," she told WENN about filming various scenes, via Digital Spy. She said kissing scenes were especially hard and Vaughn "had to pick me up for half the dancing. He's actually holding me in the air so we can stay in the same frame," she revealed. In another incident, Witherspoon and Vaughn filmed a scene in bed where he lied on top of his co-star. She explained the big man felt like "a tree trunk had just landed on me. I kept going, 'Tim-berrrrr!'"