Reese Witherspoon Recalls Filming Her 1st Movie With Late Diane Keaton

Reese Witherspoon had a special relationship with Diane Keaton prior to her death at age 79.

“She just really took a chance on me,” Witherspoon, 49, told The Times of London in a profile published on Saturday, October 25. “You never forget those people who give you your first job opportunities.”

When Witherspoon was starting out as an actress, she was cast in the 1991 TV movie Wildflower, directed by Keaton.

“She was just truly original through it all,” Witherspoon recalled of Keaton, further noting that the late icon was like an “auntie to me” during production.

Keaton died on October 11 after battling bacterial pneumonia and is survived by her two adult children. Shortly after news of Keaton’s death broke, Witherspoon shared her condolences.

“I just wanted to talk to you for one second because, and I’m gonna try to get through this without tearing up, but I don’t know if you guys heard that Diane Keaton passed,” Witherspoon said during her Shine Away panel event in Los Angeles. “I had to take a second to just really think about it because when I was 15 years old. Diane was really important — she was one of my first mentors in this business.”

She continued, “I was 15 years old and I was from Nashville, Tennessee, and I didn’t know anybody and I came on, it was my second, maybe my third movie audition ever, and I auditioned for her and she looked at me after … and she goes, who are you?”

Witherspoon introduced herself to Keaton as, “I’m Reese Witherspoon. I’m from Nashville, Tennessee.”

“She said, ‘Are you making that up? That accent that you’re doing?’” the Morning Show star said earlier this month, revealing that Keaton told her, “Well, you’re hired today, tomorrow [and] the next day. I don’t know who you are, but I’m excited to have you.”

Since appearing in Wildflower, Witherspoon has starred in countless films and TV shows much like Keaton’s own legendary career. Keaton, for her part, often played the beloved mother figure in many fan-favorite romantic comedies.

“I remember I had a lot of anxiety during those two movies,” Kimberly Williams-Paisley said on a recent episode of the “Call It What It Is” podcast, referring to the Father of the Bride franchise. “I mean, I was 19 on the first one. It was the first major role I had, and Diane was like a mother figure to me, who was very safe.”

She continued, “I talked to her about my anxiety. I had a lot of dreams. I’m a big dreamer, literally a big dreamer, but I would have, like, weird nightmares and weird [things], and I think it was, like, me working out my anxiety in the middle of the night, and she would analyze dreams with me.”

Williams-Paisley, 54, played Annie Banks in Charles Shyer’s 1991 feature film, which chronicled Annie’s whirlwind wedding planning journey. Keaton famously played Annie’s mother, Nina Banks. The film, and its sequel, also starred Steve Martin, Martin Short and Kieran Culkin.