Reese Witherspoon: Beyond Beautiful video on the 'awful script'

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The four women featured on the latest Entertainment Weekly cover, know first-hand about the struggles women face in Hollywood. In fact, one fight Oscar-winning star Reese Witherspoon had about a screenplay led to her shift into producing, with projects like Wild and Gone Girl on her expanding resume.

“About four years ago, I got sent a script … and it was just awful. It was just a terrible script, and this male star was starring in it, and there was a girlfriend part. And I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. No, I’m not interested,'” Witherspoon said during EW’s Beyond Beautiful roundtable interview alongside Kerry Washington, Elizabeth Banks, and Eva Longoria. “They said, ‘Well, this actress is chasing it, that actress is chasing it.’ Like, three Oscar winners and two huge box-office leading ladies. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s where we’re at? This is where we’re at? You’re fighting to be the girlfriend in a dumb comedy? For what?’ And by the way, two Oscar winners did it. I was like, ‘I’ve got to do something.'”

The “awful” script led to the actress become a more active producer. But despite taking control of her own situation, Witherspoon said she still fights in battles with studio executives “who have given half a million dollars to a big male movie star to run his own company, but won’t pay a woman to do the same thing.”

“But they want to acquire everything I’m doing with my own money,” she said.

Watch the clip above, and stay tuned for the full Beyond Beautiful roundtable discussion to go online Friday.