Reese Witherspoon likes a "challenge"

She told the new issue of InStyle magazine: "It's a new chapter for me starting a business, going around passing the hat, and promoting it all over the place. It's a different experience, but I'm enjoying learning something new. I've been acting for about 25 years, and I still love it, but I like the challenge of trying something else too ...

"I've learned, particularly when you're in a business for a long time, you need to treat people the way you want to be treated. Because at the end of the day, you're going to be up, you're going to be down, but it's really about how you behaved. That's important to me."

And whilst the 40-year-old actress - who has Ava, 17, and Deacon, 13, with her ex-spouse Ryan Phillippe and Tennessee, four, with her husband Jim Toth - is really busy, she tries to do the best she "possibly can" with her children.

She said: "No one's really doing it perfectly. I think you love your kids with your whole heart, and you do the best you possibly can ...

"There are some sacrifices you make, and it hurts your heart sometimes, but my kids tell me they're proud of what I've accomplished, and that just means everything. I grew up with a working mom, and I have so much respect for the things she did as a nurse and a teacher. I would never begrudge her that."