Of course, if she was told anything of the sort now, Witherspoon wouldn't hesitate to walk away from the project, but at the time she was 23 and had just welcomed her first daughter with then-husband Ryan Phillippe.
“It’s funny to think of all the things we were told to do back then because now you’re thinking, ‘Oh God, if somebody told my daughter to do that, she’d be like, I really hope you’re joking,’” she explained.
In the audition, Witherspoon adopted a southern accent and bluffed her way through questions about being in a sorority house, despite dropping out of college. “I remember a room full of men who were asking me questions about being a coed and being in a sorority ... even though I had dropped out of college four years earlier and I have never been inside a sorority house.”
Eventually, she beat out the other actresses such as Christina Applegate, Katherine Heigl and Gwyneth Paltrow to be cast as Elle - and the rest is history.
