Reese Witherspoon has revealed she once parted with a financial adviser after he – wrongly – predicted her career would end once she reached her forties.
The actor, now 44 and whose recent TV credits include Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and Little Fires Everywhere, shared the anecdote during a recent interview with the LA Times.
“I’ll never forget, I had a financial advisor tell me, ‘You need to start saving,’” she told the newspaper.
“I was like 37, and he said, ‘You need to start saving right now, because you’re going to be making drastically less money in your forties. Basically, you’re not going to have much of a career.
“And he’s apologising, but not really. ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but somebody has to be honest with you.’
“I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget! It put me in a panic state.”
Asked what happened after the exchange, Witherspoon said she fired the financial advisor.
In addition to her acting career, Witherspoon has had success as a producer, on projects such as the 2014 films Wild and Gone Girl.
Witherspoon told the LA Times that working as a producer was a key part in developing female-driven narratives which might not have been elevated otherwise.
“I wasn’t getting calls ... and I’m still not,” she said.
“The phone’s not ringing. If Nicole [Kidman] and myself aren’t doing this work or Kerry Washington, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie and Laura Dern ... we’re working hard to create a surplus. We have to give each other ideas and produce for each other, because no one’s out there thinking of us first.”
