Reese Witherspoon finally speaks publicly about her split from Ryan Phillippe in Elle mag’s October issue. “Right around Christmastime I was sitting in a parking lot and I felt like I just couldn’t get out of the car,” she says about a moment of panic she experienced a month after the couple’s breakup in October 2006. “It was like, I can’t get out of the car.” Witherspoon, however, says she found strength in realizing that so many others have made it through the pain of divorce. “I thought, okay, half of the parking lot has dealt with this. More than half of the parking lot has dealt with this,” she tells the mag. “Okay, let’s make it a little bigger. Half of this city has dealt with this. Okay, let’s make it a little bigger - half of this country, until I finally got out of the car.” The actress likens the memory to a scene from her Oscar-winning role in the Johnny Cash biopic: “There’s this moment in Walk the Line where June Carter says, ‘I was never aware of how much I was seen.’ I was very aware of how much I was seen. It was this moment of self-discovery and loss of identity and who was stepping out of the car, you know? Who is that person?” And those close to her say both the triumph and losses in her life recently have changed Witherspoon. “She’s a bit more liberated professionally and personally,” says Andy Tennant, who directed her in Sweet Home Alabama. “If you’re going through stuff in your life, you hope for the best and struggle to keep it together, and when it collapses - after the initial shock - you look around and find out who you are.” Despite Witherspoon’s image of being a woman in control, the mother of two scoffs at the notion. “Oh, come on, man!” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if I were [always in control]. I wouldn’t be able to have the empathy or the capacity to understand different lives.” The 31-year-old prides herself on her Southern values - and not being like some of the other young stars making headlines in Hollywood. “Everybody is hung out to dry now,” she says of the coverage of young stars. “It’s one thing if you’re up for it and you want it, and you go out without your panties on. But if you’re wearing your panties - gosh darn it, leave me alone!”
