Top 10 Legally Blonde Stars: Where Are They Now?
#10: Victor Garber
They say that Canadians are the nicest people. But as nice a guy as Canadian actor Victor Garber may be in real life, to “Legally Blonde” fans he’ll always be Professor Callahan - the distinguished law professor who turns creepy jerk and hits on Elle. In the decades since “Legally Blonde,” Garber has been seen in movies and television - including a recurring role as Martin Stein/Firestorm on a number of DC series. In 2021, Victor came back to the law, playing Harry Svensson - the patriarch of a dysfunctional family of lawyers in “Family Law.”
#9: Holland Taylor
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Like Victor Garber, Holland Taylor has been in the business for about 5 decades, and like Garber, she too played a professor in “Legally Blonde.” Although she throws Elle out of class for being unprepared, Taylor’s Professor Stromwell turns out to be more encouraging than anticipated. In the years since the film’s release, Taylor has made headlines for dating Sarah Paulson and earned Emmy nominations for playing Charlie Sheen’s mother on “Two and a Half Men.” In 2021, she returned to a professorial role, playing Professor Joan Hambling in Netflix’s comedy-drama series “The Chair”.
#8: Ali Larter
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In 2001, when she played accused murderer Brooke Windham in “Legally Blonde,” Ali Larter was a beautiful, yet relatively unknown actress, just a few years into her career. Not long after she would grace TV screens regularly with her role on “Heroes.” With that and the “Resident Evil” franchise, she’s become a recognizable Hollywood star with her films having made over $1 billion worldwide. While she’s done a couple of smaller movies in the early 2020s, most of her work in the last number of years has been on television. One of her more prominent jobs came in 2019 and 2020 when she appeared in a recurring role as Dr. Grace Sawyer in 13 episodes of “The Rookie.”
#7: Linda Cardellini
Yup, in case you forgot, Velma from “Scooby-Doo” was in “Legally Blonde.” Agent 19- aka Laura Barton, from the MCU- was there too. Both were played by Linda Cardellini - and while she was on the side of good in both of those roles, she was the bad guy in “Legally Blonde.” We barely recognize Cardellini with a perm as Chutney Windham, the one actually guilty of the crime for which Ali Larter was on trial. Along with a television turn for Agent 19 on the “Hawkeye” series, Cardellini also recently starred in the Netflix dark comedy series “Dead to Me.”
#6: Matthew Davis
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You’ll remember Matthew Davis as the shallow jerk, Warner Huntington III. Elle’s ex is the reason she makes the decision to go to law school in the first place, so, we should at least thank him for that. Davis was a very new face on the scene back in 2001, having only been seen in three movies prior to the release of “Legally Blonde.” And while he’s been in plenty more since, as of 2010, all of his performances have been on television. Most notably, he’s become well known for playing Alaric Saltzman in the CW shows “The Vampire Diaries,” “The Originals,” and “Legacies”.
#5: Moonie
While his friends called him Moonie, you would know him better as Bruiser Woods - Elle’s adorable and scene-stealing chihuahua. Born in 1998, Moonie (AKA Moondoggie) was a young pup when he got his big break in “Legally Blonde.” Moonie returned as Bruiser in “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde” and in 2010, he was by Reese Witherspoon’s side once again, as she got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Moonie officially retired in 2014 and passed away in March of 2016 at the ripe old age of 18 - that’s 82 in human years for a dog of his size.
#4: Luke Wilson
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As junior partner Emmett Richmond in “Legally Blonde” Luke Wilson got the girl in the end and has continued to get good roles ever since. Often appearing in multiple films every year, Luke has been in more than 60 movies since his turn in “Legally Blonde” - from “Idiocracy” to “Zombieland: Double Tap” to name a couple. While he’s spent most of his career making movies, he’s also done some television. He most notably had a main role as DC superhero S.T.R.I.P.E. in the “Stargirl” series on the CW.
#3: Selma Blair
In “Legally Blonde,” Selma Blair plays Vivian Kensington, who Warner becomes engaged to after he breaks up with Elle. At first, her relationship with Elle is adversarial, but eventually, they become friends and neither end up marrying Warner. Blair has had a long and successful career in the movies like “Hellboy” and on TV shows like “American Crime Story. In 2018, though, news broke that she was living with multiple sclerosis. In 2021, Blair was featured in a documentary called “Introducing, Selma Blair,” which followed the actress around as she learned to live with the disease. Blair returned to the limelight in 2022 as a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars.”
#2: Jennifer Coolidge
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Jennifer Coolidge played Elle’s manicurist friend, Paulette Bonafonté, in “Legally Blonde” - one of the five movies she appeared in that year. And while these days she is no longer making 5 movies a year, she’s been hard at work on a number of projects. In 2018, she brought back Ms. Bonafonté for an Ariana Grande music video. In 2021, she co-starred in HBO’s “The White Lotus” - a role that won her an Emmy and saw her perform a little walk-off-music dance on stage (not the bend and snap). In 2022, she premiered in a recurring role in “The Watcher” on Netflix.
#1: Reese Witherspoon
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Reese Witherspoon was already a star when she made “Legally Blonde,” but Elle Woods helped up her fame level even higher. She has remained a star on screen in the decades since the film premiered. In the mid-2010s, Witherspoon became a power player behind the scenes as well. Reese co-founded the media company Hello Sunshine with the goal to produce female-driven content and stories, and she has seen plenty of success doing exactly that. From starring in and producing “Big Little Lies” at HBO and “Little Fires Everywhere” at Hulu, to producing one of the surprise hit films of 2022, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” Witherspoon has been busy. But hopefully not too busy to make “Legally Blonde 3.”
