The Sex Scene In ‘Fear’ Helped Inspire Reese Witherspoon To Be An ‘Agent For Change’ For Women In Hollywood

If you remember one thing about 1996’s otherwise-forgotten Fear, it’s the scene where Reese Witherspoon orgasms while riding a roller coaster with Mark Wahlberg. It was not only a seminal moment for many who saw the thriller, it also helped inspire Witherspoon to be an “agent for change.”

“I didn’t have control over it,” Witherspoon, who requested a stunt double for the below-the-waist moments, told Harper’s Bazaar. “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.”

Witherspoon said she’s “certainly not traumatized” by the scene, which she filmed when she was 19 years old, but “it was formative. 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.”

The Election actress formed the Hello Sunshine production company in 2016.

(Via Harper’s Bazaar)