Witherspoon was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to John Witherspoon,
a surgeon from Georgia who grew up in Nashville, and Betty Reese, a nurse and college professor from Harriman, Tennessee.
She is a direct descendant of Scottish-born John Witherspoon, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence
and sixth president of Princeton University, who was also a Presbyterian minister.
Because her father worked for the US military in Wiesbaden, Germany, she lived there for four years as a small child.
After returning to the United States, Witherspoon spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Nashville, Tennessee, where,
she says in Interview magazine, "I grew up in an environment where women accomplished a lot.
And if they weren't able to it was because they were limited by society. I grew up with a grandma--my father's mother--who was incredibly intelligent
but was limited by the bounds of society and propriety ... She was a voracious reader, and she encouraged me to read a lot as a child
..." a woman whose "depression" and "disconnect between her capabilities and her lack of fulfillment and achievement" continues to motivate
Witherspoon in life. After graduating from the prestigious private all-girl's Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, she attended Stanford University as a literature major.
After completing a year of her studies, she left Stanford to pursue her acting career.
