In 1996, the psychosexual thriller Fear came out, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg. In the film, there's a sex scene featuring the 19 year old actress on a rollercoaster. Although, Witherspoon, now 47, recalled that when the film first came out, she was uncomfortable with it, per TooFab.

“I didn't have control over it,” Reese Witherspoon said.

“It wasn’t explicit in the script that that's what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn't a particularly great experience,” she said matter-of-factly of the film Fear.

“I'm certainly not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative,” she added. “It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it's another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”

Witherspoon has since dedicated herself to that change. In 2016 she founded Hello Sunshine as a platform for women to tell their own stories. The company's inception coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement. However, Witherspoon she wasn't always this way, noting she was more near-sighted in her early career.

Before her breakout role in Legally Blonde, she sometimes felt “very competitive and jealous of other women and not supportive. I was really unhappy,” Witherspoon continued. “I was not seeing the abundance of opportunity.”