Reese Witherspoon told Elle in a recent interview that having her daughter, Ava, when she was 23, changed her life, as well as some basic elements of her personality.

“Somebody was saying to me the other day, ‘Oh, people get less interesting when they have kids.’ I just don’t think that’s true,” Witherspoon said. “I feel like I was so confused before I had kids, I almost got in my own way.”

Besides clearing her head and changing her perspective, her children also made Reese relax a little and not be so competitive, as when she eerily resembled her onscreen personality in her breakout film, “Election”.

“Having kids made me clearer about who I was as a woman. I just wanted to exhibit good qualities for my daughter. I was a little competitive before I had kids — probably really competitive, to be honest. It really made me let go of that.” Witherspoon said.

She is a really busy mom now, with 3 kids: Ava, 11, Deacon, 9 and Tennessee, 1. However that hasn’t slowed her down one bit. She recently stared in the Indie film “Mud”. She’s not just a pretty face on the screen anymore, though.

She is also the founding Producer of Pacific Standard production company, which is currently working on a movie adaptation of the hit novel “Gone Girl”. Of her new career in production, she says,

“I started noticing a couple years ago that I wasn’t seeing women as the stars of movies,” she said. “I’m seeing them as the guys’ girlfriends, or so-and-so’s wife. I just thought: God, if I don’t start buckling down and start producing some movies, what’s my daughter going to see in the movies?”

I’m sure Ava is, and will be, so proud of her mom and role model. Witherspoon says her children gave her direction, and it looks like that direction will surely be a successful one.

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