California COT): A bad script Reese Witherspoon was sent four years ago made the Oscar winner rethink her place in Hollywood. Now a busy producer and lifestyle guru, the Walk The Line star admits the role she was offered made her realise acting wasn’t enough for her anymore. Recalling the “awful, terrible script” she mulled over, Reese tells Entertainment Weekly, “This male star was starring in it (film), and there was a girlfriend part. And I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. No, I’m not interested’. “They said, ‘Well, this actress is chasing it, that actress is chasing it’. (They were) three Oscar winners and two huge box office leading ladies, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s where we’re at? You’re fighting to be the girlfriend in a dumb comedy? For what?’” Reese isn’t naming names - or the film she turned down - but adds, “By the way, two Oscar winners did it.” Witherspoon has since set up her own production company, Pacific Standard, with partner Bruna Papandrea.

The company, which has found impressive early success with Gone Girl and Wild, currently has SJ Watson’s thriller Second Life, astronaut drama Pale Blue Dot and Wall Street comedy Opening Belle on its prospective slate. In 2014, Witherspoon picked up her first best actress Oscar nomination in nine years for her turn as a grieving hiker in Wild, where she competed against Gone Girl’s Rosamund Pike. The actor and producer also said she had been inspired to set up Pacific Standard following encounters with studio executives “who have given half a million dollars to a big male movie star to run his own company, but won’t pay a woman to do the same thing”, adding: “But they now want to acquire everything I’m doing with my own money.”