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'Female roles were terrible' Reese Witherspoon on her Hollywood partnership with an Aussie

Self-confessed 'book nerds' Reese Witherspoon and Aussie Bruna Papandrea have formed one of the strongest duos in Hollywood by choosing to showcase movies with strong female lead roles.

The daughter of a single Italian mum growing up in one of Adelaide's poorest towns, Bruna was striving to get into filmmaking when Reese, the daughter of a surgeon and a professor, was hitting her stride as an actress.

"I didn’t know where one thing would lead to another. I think sometimes you don’t know. You just have to expose yourself you know it doesn’t matter what business you’re in," Bruna told Sunday Night.

Bruna had made her way from Elizabeth, South Australia, where she scored her first acclaimed role producing Australian Indie film Better Than Sex. She made a name for herself in the US producing Milk, Warm Bodies and All Good Things.

Bruna Papandrea headed to Hollywood from Elizabeth, South Australia
Bruna Papandrea headed to Hollywood from Elizabeth, South Australia

Reese won the Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line and nailed the romantic comedy scene with Legally Blonde and other hits.

But what they both discovered in Hollywood was the lack of ground-breaking female roles.

"I started noticing that the female roles that were coming to me were just, I mean, frankly terrible," Reese said.

"They were so one note, they were usually the wife of the girlfriend of some famous actor and it just started to diminish."

"So I thought well what if I just develop them myself?"

After meeting at a party Reese and Bruna formed a partnership in 2012, named Pacific Standard.

"We're voracious readers," Bruna said.

"[Reese] probably more so than me!"

They had purchased the movie rights to both Wild and Gone Girl before the books hit the shelves.

"I gave [Wild] to Bruna and I said, 'What do you think about coming to produce with me?" Reese said, "She read it and she called me and she said, ‘This is amazing and I really want to make this movie'."

The suspenseful thriller Gone Girl and soul-searching Wild both became best-sellers on the same day and went on to be box office hits.

"I said, ‘We can’t just make an okay movie, we have to make really good movies’ and she’s like ‘I know’ and I’m like. ‘That’s so much pressure!’"

Incredibly, both women fell pregnant the year their company launched — something they attribute some of their success to.

"Pregnant women get a lot of stuff done. There’s the sense that you’re incubating a human being but you’re also trying to accomplish things and in a way we sort of incubated the company," Reese said.

The whirlwind has taken Bruna far from home is never too far from her thoughts.

"You’ll never meet another person who like loves Australia more than I do."

"The Australians that I know that have done really well in Hollywood, I mean, they’re so charismatic, you just want to spend time around them, they just sort of pull you in with their friendliness and their humour, but also they’re just willing to take chances and a lot of risk."

Reese and Bruna have also produced comedy Hot Pursuit and have lined up TV shows for the future too, but it is Reese and Bruna's continued passion for books that drives their production schedule.

Follow Reese on and Pacific Standard Instagram for more updates

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