Age: 50
female
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon (born March 22, 1976) is an American actress and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2015, and Forbes listed her among the World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2019 and 2021. In 2021, Forbes named her the world's highest earning actress, and in 2023, she was named one of the richest women in America with an estimated net worth of $440 million. Witherspoon began her career as a teenager, making her screen debut in The Man in the Moon (1991). Her breakthrough came in 1999 with a supporting role in Cruel Intentions, and for her portrayal of Tracy Flick in the black comedy Election. She gained wider recognition for playing Elle Woods in the comedy Legally Blonde (2001) and its 2003 sequel, and for starring in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama (2002). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying June Carter Cash in the musical biopic Walk the Line (2005). Following a career downturn, during which her sole box-office success was the romantic drama Water for Elephants (2011), Witherspoon made a comeback by producing and starring as Cheryl Strayed in the drama Wild (2014), which earned her a second nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. She has since worked primarily in television, producing and starring in several female-led literary adaptations under her company Hello Sunshine. These include the HBO drama series Big Little Lies (2017–2019), the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show (2019–present), and the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere (2020). For the first of these, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. She has also produced the film adaptations Gone Girl (2014) and Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), and the miniseries adaptation Daisy Jones & the Six (2023). Witherspoon also owns Reese's Book Club and a clothing company, Draper James. She is involved in children's and women's advocacy organizations. She serves on the board of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) and was named Global Ambassador of Avon Products in 2007, serving as honorary chair of the charitable Avon Foundation dedicated to women's causes.
Eternal Flame is a gripping four-part dramatic limited series that chronicles the meteoric rise and devastating collapse of the iconic 1980s band The Bangles. Framed through the shifting, often contradictory memories of its members, the series uncovers the raw reality behind the glossy MTV image. The story begins in the gritty 1981 Los Angeles "Paisley Underground" scene, where the Peterson sisters, Susanna Hoffs, and Annette Zilinskas forge a fierce, democratic pact to build a leaderless rock-and-roll democracy. Rebranded as The Bangles and joined by seasoned bassist Michael Steele, they conquer the underground club circuit with their raw garage-rock sound.However, when global pop deity Prince gifts them "Manic Monday" and major label executives at Columbia Records realize the camera's intense fixation on Susanna, the band’s egalitarian dream is pushed to the brink. Swept up in the corporate machinery of the late-'80s music industry, the women find their gritty artistic identity actively commodified, polished, and packaged into slick pop perfection. As massive commercial hits like "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Eternal Flame" rocket them to global arena stardom, heavy-handed management and toxic media narratives aggressively isolate Susanna, branding the group as a singer and her backup band.Stretched to the absolute breaking point by relentless touring, exhaustion, and unaddressed creative friction, the band's internal sisterhood cracks. The tension culminates in a chaotic, legendary 1989 blowout concert on a literal slab of unfinished concrete at the Houston Beltway 8 freeway opening, where the group dramatically implodes. Rich in period detail, complex relationships, and authentic musicality, Eternal Flame strips away cheap '80s nostalgia to deliver a fierce, empathetic, and honest examination of systemic industry sexism, the high price of mega-stardom, and the tragic cost of creative compromise.
