Call 2014 Reese Witherspoon’s comeback year. The Walk the Line star will play the lead in two movies this Oscar season, The Good Lie (October 3) and Wild (December 5), and co-star in Inherent Vice (December 12). She also earned good notices for a small role in May 2014’s Devil’s Knot.
In contrast to the sunny but sassy good girl she’ll play in The Good Lie, Witherspoon goes somewhat darker in Wild. The deeply troubled woman that Cheryl Strayed describes in her best-selling memoir is a heroin addict who’s grieving the relatively sudden death of her mother from lung cancer by entangling herself with a series of undesirable men. Her 1,100-mile hike up the Pacific Crest Trail isn’t simply an excuse for pretty scenes of nature, either, as the trailer offers close-ups of Witherspoon’s blackened, bloodied feet.
