“This is an issue that has been in the dark for too long. There remains what can seem like an impenetrable wall of silence, around violence. And we must all play a role in breaking that silence.”

The funny thing,” Reese Witherspoon says, “is it happens all the time.” A day after Gordon Brown thanked “Renée Witherspoon” in Parliament for her work for victims of domestic violence, Witherspoon is wondering why she and her friend, fellow actress Renée Zellweger are often confused with each other. “Maybe it’s an R-W, R-Z thing,” she says. “I phoned Renée, and she already knew. She said three people yesterday had said to her, ‘Hi Reese, how are you?’”

There should be stranger elements to this tale than the mystery of the Z-W congruence. Such as, why is a 33-year-old actress from the US, most famous for a film in which she plays a ditzy blonde lawyer, being thanked at Prime Minister’s Questions? Why was she later given access to meet Sarah Brown? And why, purely by virtue of signing a contract in 2007 to advertise cosmetics, is she fronting a British campaign for the end of a postcode lottery in domestic violence services?

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Reese Witherspoon’s son wanted to kill things after watching her new movie.

The blonde actress was amazed when a trip to see Monsters vs Aliens – in which she voices the character of Susan, a woman who swells to 42 ft 11 ins tall and then helps save the planet from an alien invasion – brought out Deacon’s violent tendencies.

Reese – who has nine-year-old daughter Ava and five-year-old son Deacon with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe – told BANG Showbiz: “I took my kids to see it a couple of week’s ago. As I was driving home from the theater I said to my children in the back seat, ‘So, what do you think is the message in this movie?’ My daughter really thoughtfully said, ‘I think it’s about never letting someone underestimate you and always living up to your true potential.’ I said, ‘That is so astute, yes, Ava, that is exactly what the message is.’

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Reese Witherspoon could soon be seen high-kicking her way through an action film.

The Legally Blonde star – who has so far stuck mainly to the romantic comedy and drama genres – is voicing the part of Ginormica, a superhero/monster in new 3D animation Monsters Vs Aliens, and it’s made her think about doing something similar in real-life.

“It might be fun, it actually has gotten me excited. I have never been in an action film before so the last third of this movie is so action-packed, it made me very excited. I think maybe I could do that,” she said.

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Even Reese Witherspoon finds it difficult to globe-trot at her leisure.

“It’s hard to travel when you have two small children,” she says. But her work as Avon’s global ambassador has taken her around the world in the fight against domestic violence and breast cancer and for emergency-relief fundraising.

A two-day summit on women’s issues brought Witherspoon to the nation’s capital on Tuesday, where she unveiled Avon’s latest fundraising initiative: the empowerment necklace. The small silver chain is an offshoot of last year’s empowerment bracelet, which helped raise $4 million for the Avon Women’s Empowerment Fund.

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She might be an Oscar-winning actress but to her two kids, Reese Witherspoon is sometimes, well, just embarrassing, she says in a new interview.

To illustrate her point, the actress tells the story to Parents magazine of taking her 9-year-old daughter Ava to see country star Carrie Underwood.

“She said, ‘Mom I really appreciate you taking me to the concert, but will you please not embarrass me in front of Carrie Underwood by singing because she’s a real singer and you’re just, like a movie singer,” says Witherspoon, who won a Best Actress Oscar for playing singer June Carter Cash in 2005′s Walk the Line.

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Reese is inside Redbook magazine’s March 2009 issue. Here is a some of the article via their website.

Reese Witherspoon on Movies and Motherhood
The manners and morals of a movie-star mom

I’m not a super-strict parent, but I think it’s important to have rules for children. It gives them a sense of structure — and that’s what we are all seeking. We just want to know when we’ve done something right or wrong. That’s what I’m trying to teach my own children [Ava, nine, and Deacon, five].

I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and my parents taught me to respect my elders. We’d say things like “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” to adults. But kids in Los Angeles don’t do that. I’ve drawn the line at my children calling adults by their first names. I tell them they can call people “Miss Shannon” or “Miss Heather” but that using only the first name is too familiar. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

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