Reese Witherspoon and Britney Spears ended marriages the same year and were raising two kids as single moms and Witherspoon says their treatment couldn’t have been more different.
The “Big Little Lies” star and producer talked to Time magazine about the “Framing Britney Spears” documentary and how it highlighted for her the similarities between her and the pop star’s lives years ago.
Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe split in 2006 and around the same time Spears and her then husband, Kevin Federline, also ended their marriage.
Witherspoon said that like Spears, she and her family were hounded by the paparazzi.
“My children will tell you stories about being in preschool and people climbing on the roofs of our cars,” she told Time.
The actress and lifestyle mogul said she was very aware that some women celebs like Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were labeled “bad” while those like her and Jennifer Garner were “good” — even though Witherspoon said there’s plenty of footage of her out there yelling at the cameras.
“What if the media had decided I was something else? I would be in a totally different position,” she said. “I want to say it’s my decisions or the career choices I made, but it felt very arbitrary.”
Witherspoon has since remarried and has another child.