Who hasn’t heard of Reese Witherspoon?
She is one of the top paid actresses in Hollywood. Winning the hearts of America with starring roles in Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama. She also recently won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line.
For many young actresses the idea of being a mother was unthought of because it would ruin their figure and interfere with their career. But Reese had other ideas and her first child was born when she was 23.
Her kids come first.
Reese Witherspoon is a mom after my own heart. In Hollywood where being a mom is second to being an actress and is all about the money she is a refreshing change.
She has two children 6 year old daughter, Ava and a two year old son Deacon. Being a mother is important to her, so important that she doesn’t have a nanny, because she wants to be a “hands-on mother”.
She and her actor husband, Ryan Phillippe, try to take their kids with them as often as possible. Now that Ava’s in school it is a little more difficult. But she and her husband try not to work at the same time.
Making their lives normal.
In an interview with Readers Digest, Reese comments that she and her husband make life normal for their kids by trying to “keep their feet on the ground and raise them with the values we were raised with.” One example of this is the importance she places on religion. Every Sunday Reese takes her children to church because she thinks, “it’s important for a child to feel that there are things that are bigger than your life out there.”
They don’t have a cook because Reese does all the cooking. She loves getting creative in the kitchen, although her children’s favorite meal is very normal – homemade hamburger helper which consists of macaroni and cheese with hamburger meat.
What about the money?
Although she makes a lot of money she and Ryan don’t spend a lot and they give a lot of money away. They didn’t grow up with money and they haven’t changed. They each own one car, and as she puts it they aren’t fancy. They also live in a “reasonable house” not an extravagant one. She says, “I think our lives work as a family, because I just pretend I’m not famous half the time.”
Her children are lucky to have a mother that is an extraordinary actress but an ordinary mom.