Thursday, 5 March 2009

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Reese calls divorce humiliating and isolating

Actress on life after split in 2006

Actress Reese Witherspoon starred in Legally Blonde

At Reese Witherspoon's low point after her very public divorce from Ryan Phillippe, the actress found some efforts to console her far from helpful.

"When people get in your face and say, 'This will pass,' you think: Are they crazy?" Witherspooon, 32, tells the April issue of Elle. "I'm never gonna feel any better than I feel right this minute and nothing's ever gonna make sense again. And I still have moments where I'm like, 'Nothing's ever gonna make sense again.' "

But while she calls the split in 2006 "very humiliating and very isolating," Witherspoon came to realize, "If it's not painful, maybe it wasn't the right decision to marry to begin with. Those are the appropriate emotions."

Blame Game
So, she says, is falling into the "blame game."

"Blame, blame, blame," she says. "You know? And it's a really easy thing to do, and I'm certainly guilty of it. [You have to] look at yourself and go: 'What part of this do I need to own? Which part of this is my responsibility?' And that's the painful work that you have to go through to hopefully get some real-life knowledge out of it."

But the experience hasn't left her sour on love: Witherspooon, who has two children with Phillippe, 34, is now in a relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal, 28. "He's fabulous," she says. "He really is a fantastic guy."

Mike Fleeman