Annette unwittingly becomes a pawn
in Sebastian and Kathryn's
deliciously diabolical wager of
sexual conquest when she writes an
article in Seventeen Magazine about
how she intends to stay pure until
she marries her boyfriend. However,
Sebastian gets more than he
bargained for as he attempts to woo
Annette into his bed.
A former child model and veteran of television commercials from the age of seven, Reese Witherspoon made her film debut in the romantic coming-of-age story The Man in the Moon (1991). Witherspoon landed the role after winning a multi-state talent hunt. Prior to that, the blonde, teenager had appeared in the Lifetime cable network movie Wildflower (1991). While still in high school, Witherspoon completed two more feature films, Jack the Bear (1993), starring Danny DeVito, and @Disney}'s A Far Off Place (1993) during the film of which, Witherspoon spent several months living in the Kalahari Desert and learning the language of a local African Bushmen tribe. After that, Witherspoon co-starred in the CBS miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove. Between 1994 and 1996, Witherspoon temporarily set aside her career to study English literature at Stanford University. She re-entered movies playing opposite a psychotic Mark Wahlberg in the thriller Fear (1996). Witherspoon's breakthrough role came with her next film, Freeway in which she played a teenager who becomes a victim of crazed hitchhiker Kiefer Sutherland. Lest one think Witherspoon specializes in victims, keep in mind that both films contain twists that allow her to prevail. Witherspoon's career took off during the late '90s to the point that she had to put her college plans aside.
Though absent from theaters in 1997, Witherspoon strongly renewed her screen presence the following year, beginning with a supporting turn in Robert Benton's Twilight, which afforded her the opportunity to work with screen legend Paul Newman and venerated actors Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon. Later in the year, she played the most popular girl in the school to Matthew Broderick's history-teaching guidance counselor in Election, and starred with fellow young phenom Tobey Maguire as a brother-sister duo who bring a little bit of color to the inhabitants of a black-and-white '50s sitcom in Pleasantville. Never one to let the dust settle on any aspect of her career, she delivered a larger-than-life performance of a different stripe when she was featured in a six-story-tall GAP advertisement on the side of the Peterson Building on L.A.'s Sunset Boulevard.