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Reese Witherspoon goes makeup-free in touching trailer for 'Wild'

You don't need makeup when you're trying to find yourself, and Reese Witherspoon does just that in the new trailer for the upcoming film "Wild," based on Cheryl Strayed's book.In the nonfiction best-seller, a book-club staple, Strayed loses her mother and her marriage and falls into heroin use. At age 26, with no backpacking experience, she decides to hike the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail. As t
Reese Witherspoon in "Wild."
Reese Witherspoon in \"Wild.\"Anne Marie Fox / 20th Century Fox

You don't need makeup when you're trying to find yourself, and Reese Witherspoon does just that in the new trailer for the upcoming film "Wild," based on Cheryl Strayed's book.

In the nonfiction best-seller, a book-club staple, Strayed loses her mother and her marriage and falls into heroin use. At age 26, with no backpacking experience, she decides to hike the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail. 

As the trailer shows, she doesn't plan well. Her backpack is too big for her, her shoes don't fit, and she knows nothing about hiking, backpacking or camping. But as frustrated as you may become with her naive lack of preparation, you feel for her too, as she's flooded with memories and grief, and becomes so lonely she tries to make friends with a fox.

It's also refreshing to see Witherspoon without a painted face, her hair straggling around her shoulders. She's still more glamorous than most every true hiker you'll see on your favorite trail, but for Hollywood, this is progress. 

“She went method with the hair and no makeup,” director Jean-Marc Vallee told Entertainment Weekly. “We wanted to see Reese out there, not vain at all, not concerned with her image, and she went for it." Witherspoon also passed on using a hairbrush, Vallee said, although the real-life Strayed did not.

Watch the trailer, then share it with your book club, because you know they're going to go see it.

"Wild" is scheduled to hit theaters on Dec. 5.