The movies' favorite tomboy right now is Reese Witherspoon, a spunky, bright-eyed 16-year-old who is about to ruin her image by blossoming into a lovely young woman.
Hollywood, which traditionally labeled adolescence "the awkward years," dumped the teenage Shirley Temple and Margaret O'Brien. But Witherspoon is making the transition from caterpillar to graceful butterfly look easy.Partly because she is petite, not conventionally pretty, with a youthful, intelligent face, Wither-spoon has been credibly playing 12-year-olds the past couple of years.
She first starred with Sam Wa-terston and Tess Harper in "Man in the Moon." Now "Jack the Bear" has been released in which she co-stars with Danny De Vito. Later this year she will be seen starring in "A Far Off Place," filmed in Africa with Maximilian Schell and Jack Thompson.
Cable audiences will recognize Witherspoon from her heart-warming performance in the HBO movie "Wildflower," directed by Diane Keaton. TV viewers saw her earlier this year playing a young athlete suffering from leukemia in the NBC two-hour movie "Desperate Choices: To Save My Child" with Bruce Davidson.
Altogether poised and independent, Witherspoon flew to Hollywood on her own recently to publicize her two new movies.
Over a dish of ravioli in a Sunset Strip hotel restaurant, Wither-spoon pushed a strand of dark blond hair from her forehead and said she isn't in a hurry to lose her tomboy persona.
"I'm 5-foot-2 and I weigh 93 pounds," she said. "I'm almost 17. So I'm probably not going to grow much. Considering the average woman from 20 to 65 shrinks 3 inches, that won't leave much left of me.
"It's fun playing scrappy, smart young girls. I guess I recognize a lot of myself in those characters, but I can't say I'm just being myself. It's work and it's fun.
"I loved playing Allie in `Wild-flower' because it was close to home and set in the 1940s. I live in the South and I was the only genuine, authentic Southern person in the cast.
"You want to know how Southern I am? Well my real name is Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon. My great-great-great-great-grandfather, John D. Witherspoon, signed the Declaration of Independence."
Witherspoon, a native of Nashville, Tenn., is the daughter of a surgeon and a professor of nursing. She is an 11th-grade student at a private girls' school.
"Some of my classmates hate going to an all-girls school, but I like it," she said. "You don't have to worry about looking bad in the morning and stuff like that. There's plenty of time for boys after school.
"I was 14 when I got my first job. (Director) Robert Mulligan was looking for a girl to play the lead in `Man in the Moon' but I didn't know that. I read an ad for auditions for extras in the movie.
"I was really excited about the chance to be an extra and see myself in the background of a movie. When Mom drove me to the auditions they gave me lines to read for a videotape. After the casting people left town I forgot all about it.
"Then I was sent a script and given a screen test. Two weeks later I got the part. It was the story of a young girl who falls in love for the first time only to have her boyfriend fall in love with her best friend, her big sister. She lost her first love and grew up fast.
"I've never played the beautiful little girl in fancy wardrobe, but that doesn't mean my roles are all the same. Each one of them is different to me and I play them that way.
"I play a strong, pretty tough opinionated girl in `A Far Off Place' who makes a big transition. It's about how children, as they grow up, deal with death. She loses her parents and is on her own in Africa.
"It was great shooting in Zimbabwe and Namibia for almost five months, although it messed up my school work. But then Africa was an education in itself. It's good experience working with adult professionals who treat me as one of them instead of like a kid. It's nice.
"I travel and go to locations alone. I mean what can anybody do for me that I can't do for myself? Not that I don't like being around my family. But there comes a time when you have to be on your own.
"What could be worse than being pampered at home until you're 18 and then going off to college where you can't even pay a bill, for gosh sakes.
"All I ever wanted to do was be an actress. Maybe I'm just an attention hog.
"I like coming to L.A., but I don't plan to move here when I graduate next year. Dad went to Yale and wants me to go there too, but I kind of like Stanford. If acting jobs come along, I'll just drop out for a while and then go back to classes.
"It all depends on how my career goes, but I can't play spunky young girls all my life."