It is only seven days since Reese Witherspoon married her boyfriend of one year, Jim Toth, in front of a crowd of Hollywood A-listers at her ranch 110km north of Los Angeles.
So it is not surprising that she is all smiles as she bounces into a seafront hotel suite in Santa Monica, proudly showing off her four-carat Ashoka diamond engagement ring and two-carat wedding band to film studio staff awaiting her arrival.
It is the second marriage for the 35-year-old actress, who split from her first husband, the actor Ryan Phillippe, in 2006 after seven years.
"A lot of women my age feel that life is short and you've got to take every opportunity to be as happy as you possibly can," she says, settling down to discuss life, love and second chances. It's a wonderful time in my life and if somebody gives you an opportunity to do something you should jump at it. Sometimes we're fearful and fear can really crush you. I've had trepidations about getting in relationships and getting married again, but I've never wanted fear to be the reason that I didn't find happiness in my life."
Witherspoon, looking young and radiant with her blonde hair down to her shoulders, is wearing a burgundy Roland Mouret sleeveless dress with black Armani heels. She has a wide, toothy smile and an infectiously loud laugh, which she employs often as we talk.
Her new husband, like the other men she has been in relationships with, is in show business, although he is an agent and not an actor.
"I work a lot and I usually run into people who are in the same business as me so it's kind of natural that you would gravitate towards someone who understands what you do for a living," she says. "This business has its own shorthand, its own vernacular and you see the same sort of people over and over again."
Before she married Phillippe on her 21st birthday she had dated the actors Jeremy Sisto, Chris O'Donnell and Mark Wahlberg. Then, when her marriage broke up amid rumours that Phillippe had cheated on her with the actress Abbie Cornish, she spent two and a half years with her Rendition co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, splitting with him in November 2009.
Toth entered the picture shortly afterwards. "Jim and I had met a long time ago and I always thought he was a really nice guy and then he asked me out on a date," she recalls. "You know when it's easy and you laugh all the time? We literally laugh all the time. We have the best time together and you just get that sort of great feeling. Your friends tell you it's nice to see you being yourself and enjoying life and I think your friends are the best reflection of how you feel in a relationship. When he asked me to marry him I said yes right away. I didn't have to think about it. My friends like to call me Mrs Toth now. They think it's funny.
"It just feels right. It's the right thing and he's the right person at the right time in my life. It's a great experience to find somebody that you feel well-matched with and that you feel you can really build a life with."
Then she adds firmly: "I don't feel bad about any of the things I've done and gone through, whether it's divorce or break-ups or anything like that, because it's all part of life's journey."
She and Phillippe share custody of their children, Ava, 11, and Deacon, 7, both of whom, she says, get along swimmingly with her new husband. "I wouldn't have married him if they didn't," she says, laughing. "It's been a really nice time for us but my daughter's at that age now that she doesn't ever want me to talk about her. My son's obsessed with sports and playing football all day long and they're just great. I'm very lucky: I have healthy kids and I couldn't be happier."
They live on a sprawling US$7 million (Dh25.7 million) ranch along with goats, pigs, horses, chickens, two donkeys and three dogs. She has recently put in a vegetable garden and when she is not working she cooks for the family, using her own produce as much as possible. The house, she says, is furnished basically.
"I have three dogs and two crazy kids who jump and do gymnastics and play football all over my furniture so it has to be very durable," she says.
She and Toth will be leaving on their honeymoon shortly but first she has promotional duties for her latest film, Water for Elephants, a 1930s-set melodrama in which she plays the star of a rundown circus who is married to the mercurial animal trainer but who falls in love with a newcomer, played by Robert Pattinson.
Based on a best-selling novel by Sara Gruen, the film also has a certain resonance for the actress, who cannot fail to see the similarities between the story and her own life, and the lives of other people.
"I think a lot of women relate to the story of a woman who's in a challenging relationship and doesn't see any way out but gets an opportunity for a second chance at love and at a better life - a life where she still gets to fulfil her dreams but she's loved and cared for in a way that she hasn't really experienced before," Witherspoon says. "It's a wonderful story of love, hope, redemption, second chances and finding happiness."
It sounds like something of a departure for Witherspoon, who has had huge success with romantic comedies, but in fact has managed not to be trapped in that genre, always choosing her projects carefully, not taking the easy road to stardom with mindless teen fare and broad comedies, but opting for roles of substance.
The daughter of a surgeon father and a paediatric nurse mother, she had a sturdy southern upbringing in Nashville, Tennessee. Bookish and ambitious, she planned to follow her parents into medicine but she was recruited for a local television commercial when she was seven, setting her on the path to becoming one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.
"I was a real tomboy, a tough little kid," she recalls. "I had a big brother who always made me do stuff I didn't want to do. But I had to keep up with him so I had to run fast and climb trees just like he did."
She took acting lessons while at school and when she was 14 she landed one of the leading roles in the film The Man in the Moon after expecting at most to be hired as an extra.
"I feel I don't know how I got into this movie business," she says. "I don't know if I picked it or it picked me but after I auditioned in Nashville for The Man in the Moon they called me up and asked me to fly to Los Angeles to do a screen test and they put me up in this very same hotel where we are now. I'd never seen the Pacific Ocean before and I walked across the road and it was like, 'Omigosh, I'm in Hollywood.'"
She racked up television and film credits while still at school and then went to the prestigious Stanford University in northern California with her sights set on a degree in English literature. But after only a year acting drew her back down to Hollywood, where directors were lining up to cast her in risky, complex roles in movies such as Fear and Freeway.
She met Phillippe when they starred together in Cruel Intentions and she followed it up with an inspired portrayal of a fiercely ambitious and perpetually perky high school student running for class president in Election, which earned her both Golden Globe and Independent Spirit award nominations.
After marrying Phillippe she took a two-year break from movies to give birth to Ava, and returned to the big screen in the hit comedy Legally Blonde. She followed it up by both producing and starring in a sequel, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, which earned her $15 million (Dh55.1million).
She hit a career high point portraying country singer June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, a performance that won her the Best Actress Oscar. At the same time her personal life took a downturn with her marriage showing signs of strain, and she was involved in several altercations with paparazzi, filing charges against particularly aggressive photographers who stalked her and her children through Disneyland.
Having divorced Phillippe, she met Gyllenhaal on the set of Rendition and returned to comedy for the 2008 holiday release Anywhere But Home.
Then, not receiving any scripts she liked and refusing to do what she calls "robot movies", she took another two-year break.
"I've never done a giant robot movie or a superhero movie and they don't interest me," she says. "But I have kids so when I'm not working it's not like I'm sitting around doing nothing. I'm taking care of two kids who are growing up fast."
She returned to work last year with the love triangle comedy How Do You Know, followed immediately by Water for Elephants and the yet-to-be-released spy comedy This Means War. Although she seems to have total control of both her personal and professional lives, she insists the reality is just the opposite.
"Maybe it's just foolishness but the older I get the more nervous I get. I don't profess to have any kind of expertise in love and I've had all my ups and downs. And in films I always go, 'Oh that's a great idea, I should do that movie,' and then about a week before the movie starts I call my agent or my manager and I go, 'Get me out of this movie. I can't do this. I don't know what I was thinking.' And I hang up the phone in a panic. I literally shake for five days before I start a film."
But overall, she is, she acknowledges, lucky.
"Parts of life and love are fate, and so much of it is timing; so much of it is being in a certain place at a certain time," she says. "I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the future, as if I could plan it. But as an actor I don't think you can, so my new philosophy in life is 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.'"
Water for Elephants is due for release in the UAE on Thursday.
The Witherspoon file
BORN Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon, March 22, 1976, New Orleans, Louisiana
SCHOOLING Harding Academy, Nashville, Tennessee; Stanford University, Palo Alto, California (one year)
FAMILY Father John, a surgeon; mother Betty, a paediatric nurse; older brother John; husband Jim Toth; daughter Ava, 11, and son Deacon, 7, with Ryan Phillippe
CHILDHOOD NICKNAME "Little Type A"
MUSIC Bruno Mars, White Stripes
FAVOURITE QUOTE "I have a short memory for painful things" - Martha Stewart
FIRST KISS Michael Bomboy, first high school love
The wonderful Witherspoon
Starring in a television advert at the age of seven made Reese Witherspoon want to pursue acting. She has appeared in 28 films over her 20-year career in a range of genres, from romance to comedy to fantasy. Among her most noteworthy roles:
MAN IN THE MOON (1991) Witherspoon shone in an open casting call to land the lead in her debut film at the age of 14. Her character learns her first lesson in heartbreak when she falls in love with the same boy as her sister. "Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I've ever seen in a movie," said the US film critic Roger Ebert.
ELECTION (1999) In this critically acclaimed film by director Alexander Payne, Witherspoon plays an ambitious and provocative high school senior standing for student body president, a role that earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
LEGALLY BLONDE (2001) Witherspoon stars as a sorority queen who follows her boyfriend to law school after he dumps her. A critical and commercial hit, this film catapulted her into A-list status and made her one of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses, along with getting her a Golden Globe nomination.
SWEET HOME ALABAMA (2002) Although a critical failure, this was Witherspoon's biggest international box-office success until eclipsed by Walk the Line, grossing more than $180 million (Dh661 million)worldwide. Starring alongside Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey, she plays a southern belle turned New York cosmopolitan who returns to her hometown.
WALK THE LINE (2005) Witherspoon bagged an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe, among other honours, for her spot-on portrayal of country-music star June Carter Cash opposite Joaquin Phoenix in this Johnny Cash biopic. Like Phoenix, she performed her own vocals.