Reese Witherspoon’s Half Tracy Flick, Half Elle Woods in Real Life — & 100 Percent Inspiring

According to Reese Witherspoon, there are five words in just every film with a woman in it that employs the phrase: What do we do now? “It’s my most hated question,” the actress said in her speech on Monday night at Glamour’s 2015 Women of the Year Awards. “I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because inevitably, the girl turns to the guy and says, ‘What do we do now?’” But, she asked the crowd, "Have you ever met a woman in crisis who doesn’t know what to do?“

Reese Witherspoon in an Erdem dress on the red carpet. Photo: Getty Images

Never noticed it? Well she bet you will now. And this Hollywood archetype was one of the many reasons why Witherspoon took a chance, put up her own capital (big no-no in the industry) and started her own production company, Pacific Standard, in order to showcase women in roles that reflect real life, where they’re the ones taking charge and leading the way. Like all the roles she’s portrayed throughout her long career, which she described as "passionate strong and flawed, except for [Election’s] Tracy Flick because she was a hundred percent perfect — and she made me say that.”

Some might call her ambitious with a negative connotation to it, she’s also a mom and recently started a fashion line, Draper James, but she wants to turn the word into a positive. "Why do people have prejudiced opinions against women who want to accomplish things? Why is that perceived as a negative? … Like [Legally Blonde’s] Elle Woods, I did not like to be underestimated.“

Watch Goldie Hawn introduce Reese Witherspoon and a clip of her speech.

Since starting her business just a few years ago, she’s brought Gone Girl and Wild to the silver screen, with three Oscar nominations for women in the process. "Films with women at the center are not a public service project. They are a big-time, bottom line-enhancing, money-making commodity,” the voracious reader, who has focused on adapting female-penned books into films, said. At that, she made a PSA to the celeb-filled audience. "I hope, Amy Schumer – and all the other incredible nominees – that you’ll give me the rights to your biopic first,“ the multi-hyphenate said. "Although, Amy, I’m five years older than you, so I’ll probably have to play your grandmother in the movie, by Hollywood standards, and you’ll probably have to play your own mother."

But, in closing, she left the largely female audience with some food for thought: “I urge each and everyone of you to ask yourself,” she said, “‘What do we do now?’”