'I said no to the director': Reese Witherspoon didn't have 'great experience' shooting sex scene with Mark Wahlberg

The Oscar-winning star was just 19 years old when she shot Fear and recalled feeling she had no "control" during a moment in the movie when she was shown having an orgasm while on a rollercoaster.

Noting she had requested a stunt double, Reece told America's Harper's Bazaar magazine of the scene in the 1996 psychological thriller: "I didn't have control over it.

"It wasn't explicit in the script that that's what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no.

"It wasn't a particularly great experience."

While Reese, now 47, insisted she wasn't left "traumatised" by the experience, it made her determined to put women and female experiences at the forefront of her work.

She said: "I'm certainly not traumatised or anything by it, but it was formative.

"It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it's another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze."

The actress admitted in her late teens and early 20s she was "very competitive and jealous of other women and not supportive."

She said: "I was really unhappy. I was not seeing the abundance of opportunity."

[[nid:638819]]

She recalled how she "went hard" for roles in films including Clueless and Romeo + Juliet - which ultimately went to Alicia Silverstone and Claire Danes respectively - because she was concerned about being part of a system where it felt "only one girl would make it".

She said: "Oh my God, I wanted to do Romeo + Juliet so badly, so badly.

"Of course, Claire Danes was amazing, but it was devastating to me that I didn't get it after screen tests and getting really close."

But when she fell pregnant with her and then-husband Ryan Phillippe's daughter Ava when she was 22, Reese - who also has son Deacon, 19, with her Cruel Intentions co-star and Tennessee, 10, with estranged spouse Jim Toth - knew "something had to shift" in her perspective.

She recalled: "[I asked myself] 'Who do I want my daughter to see? I really want to be a woman she looks up to.'

"I worked on it a lot. Boy, I read a lot of self-help."