Witherspoon landed the lead role ahead of Charlize Theron, who was also considered, and the movie – which co-stars Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey – then plays out as something of a fairy tale. There, she became a socialite, but after nearly a decade away, she needs to come back home to secure a divorce from her husband. The film was directed by Andy Tennant, from a screenplay by C Jay Cox (with story credit going to Douglas J Epoch), and it tells the story of Melanie Smooter, a woman who left her home in Alabama for New York City. And Sweet Home Alabama, on the surface a pretty frothy romantic comedy, would cement her place as a hugely successful leading actor.

By this stage in the early 2000s, she’d built a career quickly and impressively off a mix of very smart choices and very savvy commercial picks. Reese Witherspoon was at the height of her box office powers when she decided to take the lead in Sweet Home Alabama. Spoiler warning: the ending of Sweet Home Alabama is directly discussed towards the end of this article. The Reese Witherspoon-headlined romcom Sweet Home Alabama nearly took a bit of a dark turn.

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