5 Edgy Roles From Reese Witherspoon's Wild Early Years

This weekend sees Reese Witherspoon returning to theaters in Wild. The adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir features the actress in an Oscar-touted performance as a woman who tries to escape a self-destructive spiral of grief by hiking a thousand miles across the Pacific Crest Trail.

De-glammed, raw, and filled with R-rated scenes of sex and drugs, the film is a far cry from the rom-com hits that gave Witherspoon her America’s Sweetheart image. But to call such subject matter totally new territory for the actress would be misleading: there were a few roles at the start of her career that dealt with even darker material. Here’s a quick rundown of those early, edgy films that proved Witherspoon has always been a little bit wild.

S.F.W.

Witherspoon’s first notable role as an adult, released in 1994 when she was 18, S.F.W. is a grunge-age media satire about a pair of angsty young people (Stephen Dorff and Witherspoon) who become media sensations after surviving weeks as hostages of a terrorist group. The film was overshadowed at the time by the similarly themed Natural Born Killers, and that’s probably fair: S.F.W. is never quite as smart and stylish as it thinks it is, though Witherspoon gives a strong turn as the media-shy half of the couple.

Freeway

While S.F.W. barely made a blip, Witherspoon got a real head-turning showcase two years later with Freeway, a twisted exploitation take on Red Riding Hood. The actress plays Vanessa, an illiterate L.A. girl who ventures off to her grandmother’s house only to encounter Bob (Kiefer Sutherland), a pedophile serial killer. It’s not subtle, but it’s a lot of fun, and Witherspoon gives her first breakout turn as a surprisingly kick-ass redneck avenging angel.

Fear

With a performance that falls somewhere between the relative innocent of S.F.W. and the badass tearaway of Freeway, James Foley’s studio thriller Fear finds Witherspoon as Nicole, a rebellious teenager who begins a relationship with the seemingly sweet, polite David (a post-Marky Mark, pre-Boogie Nights Mark Wahlberg). But dad (William Petersen)’s mistrust of the new boyfriend soon turns out to be correct: David’s an obsessive, murderous stalker. There’s not much surprising in Fear, and it’s pretty reactionary, but Foley’s good at this no-nonsense thriller stuff, and Wahlberg makes an excellent villain.

Twilight & Best Laid Plans

By 1999, Witherspoon was making a name — and carving out a persona — for herself, with Pleasantville and Election paving the way for the blockbuster Legally Blonde. But she did fit in a couple of other darker roles; she had a small role as a teenage runaway opposite Paul Newman in Robert Benton’s neo-noir Twilight (which includes her only pre-Wild nude scene), and also played an underage femme fatale in taut thriller Best Laid Plans, alongside Josh Brolin and Alessandro Nivola. Both are definitely worth checking out for fans of Witherspoon’s darker side.