Reese Witherspoon was born on March 22, 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is an Academy Award-winning American actress. Witherspoon is frequently cited by media to be one of the most beautiful leading ladies in today's cinema and her off screen life is widely reported. Her first role was in the made for television movie Wildflower in 1991, followed by several moderately successful family oriented comedies and dramas in the early-mid 1990s, and then the teenage thriller Fear in 1996, where she became something of a teen idol, or pin-up girl.