Expanding roles

Storm clouds curtain the sky on a balmy Saturday afternoon in Manhattan. Undaunted by the possibility of a downpour any second, a crowd is gathered outside the Regency Hotel. Some have cameras in hand; others clutch manila envelopes. Every time the doormen escort a guest out to the sidewalk, heads turn in expectation.

The person they are hoping to see is upstairs in a suite, pondering the public’s fascination with her.

“I can’t believe people are interested in my life,” Reese Witherspoon says at a junket promoting her latest movie, “Vanity Fair,” which opens in theaters today. “There are days that I go outside and there’s paparazzi and I’m like, ‘What are they waiting for?’ “

It’s been three years since she cross-examined her way to stardom in “Legally Blonde,” but Witherspoon is still adjusting to life in the glare of flashbulbs. Every public outing is a potential media event.

“I feel very lucky to be doing something I like to do for a living, but there’s negative that goes with it,” said Witherspoon, 28, wife of actor Ryan Phillippe and mother of two.

While her work playing mirthful modern heroines has earned her magazine covers and marquee billing, she has more than laughs up her sleeve. In “Vanity Fair,” an adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s satirical classic, she leads the cast as Becky Sharp, a 19th-century vixen who lies and seduces her way to the upper rungs of English nobility.

Now shooting in her native Tennessee is the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line,” in which she plays the troubled country singer’s wife, June Carter Cash, opposite Joaquin Phoenix. She’s gone brunette for “Walk the Line,” and in “Vanity Fair” her face is framed with ginger curls. These projects offer not only a change of dialect and hair color but also the chance to prove her appeal outside the comfort zone of perky comedy.

“I constantly feel like I’m striving to get a better job or find a bigger challenge,” Witherspoon said. “The opportunity is always there to push yourself.”

Those who’ve seen Witherspoon’s work as a crooked high school politician in the 1999 satire “Election” know that the darker shade of story isn’t new to her. She says that film reflects her sensibilities more than “Legally Blonde,” but to keep herself employed she “made a conscious choice to start making lighter films.”

“After ‘Election’ came out and I got all these wonderful reviews, I couldn’t get a job,” she said. “I looked around and saw who was getting the jobs that I wanted. They were people who were doing commercial movies. … That’s when I did ‘Legally Blonde.”’

With “Vanity Fair,” she comes full circle, back to the biting humor and complex characters she favors. Becky’s behavior is, well, questionable. She cheats on her husband, betrays her best friend and abandons her child.

Though Witherspoon has donned a corset before — in the poorly received 2002 adaptation of “The Importance of Being Earnest” — “Vanity Fair” marks her first time leading the cast in a costume drama.

The film teams her with director Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”), Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”) and such prestigious co-stars as Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Gabriel Byrne and Dame Eileen Atkins. She is the only American performer in the film, which Nair feels only helps the characterization.

“Becky had sass that was quite un-English at that time,” Nair said. “Reese brings the guile and the comic timing that we all know.”

James Purefoy, a Royal Shakespeare Company member who plays Becky’s cuckolded husband, applauds his co-star for holding her own with the classically trained cast.

He says Witherspoon playing Becky Sharp is “the equivalent of me playing the sheriff in a Western with Clint Eastwood. I wouldn’t even begin to try to do it. It was enormously brave of her to take it on.”

Witherspoon hadn’t read the book when Nair approached her. Once she finished the 900-page novel, she was so entranced with the character that she took a lower-than-usual salary, shot the film during her second pregnancy (clever costume design concealed her figure) and agreed to test her dance-floor talents with a Hollywood-style production number.

“I like how strong-willed Becky is,” Witherspoon said. “It was inspiring, particularly during that time when as a woman, if you weren’t high-born or didn’t have money, you were completely valueless.”

Her own beginnings are hardly humble. Born Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon to a surgeon and pediatric nurse, the actress was a Southern belle who excelled in school and balanced homework with debutante duties. She counts among her ancestors John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an early president of Princeton University.

Artistic pursuits were Witherspoon’s calling from the start. She took part in school musicals — playing June Carter Cash’s mother, Maybelle, in a fourth-grade show — and attended a performing arts camp in the Catskills.

At 14, she went on one of her first casting calls, hoping to be tapped as an extra in the drama “The Man in the Moon.” She landed the lead.

A TV movie directed by Diane Keaton, “Wildflower,” followed, as did a couple of other supporting roles and a stint as a production assistant on Denzel Washington’s “Devil in a Blue Dress.”

After a year studying literature at Stanford University, Witherspoon turned her attention to Hollywood full time. She quit school to make “Freeway,” a morbidly twisted fable that has emerged as a cult hit. Playing a miniskirted vigilante whose four-letter soliloquies put Scarface to shame, Witherspoon proved she wasn’t your average pinup in waiting.

With “Freeway,” she won over the midnight movie crowd; the high-concept comedy “Pleasantville” gave her credibility among critics; and she gained visibility in multiplexes with the thriller “Fear.”

“Election” earned Witherspoon unanimous critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination. Cast as an alpha student who clashes with a teacher (Matthew Broderick), she delivers power-hungry zeal of grotesque proportions, with a lock-step walk, a smile just a few watts shy of demonic and enough vulnerability to keep the performance out of the realm of caricature.

“Legally Blonde” and the staggeringly profitable romantic romp “Sweet Home Alabama” bolstered her from critic’s darling to America’s sweetheart. She earned a $15 million paycheck — in league with Nicole Kidman’s salaries — to produce and star in last year’s “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.”

As an actress and budding producer — she runs her own company, Type A Films — she seeks out projects with heroines who are proactive and independent, even if they seem a bit daft at times.

“You read scripts where women are sort of mousy. I don’t know any women like that,” Witherspoon said.

“I know women that are capable and strong and organize everybody’s life around them and take care of their kids and their husband and their job.

“I don’t know any weak, mousy women, so it’s hard for me to imagine playing one.”