Reese Witherspoon's brain was like "scrambled eggs" after her divorce from Ryan Phillippe.
The 'Wild' star, who split from the actor in 2007 after eight years of marriage, admits her career also fell apart shortly afterwards and she was "really hurt" when she was included on a list of "washed-up" actresses.
The 38-year-old Oscar winner told an upcoming episode of CBS' '60 Minutes': "I spent a few years just trying to feel better ... you can't really be creative when you feel like your brain is scrambled eggs.
"I was just kind of floundering career-wise ... I wasn't making things I was passionate about. And it was really clear that audiences weren't responding to anything I was putting out there."
The blonde beauty, who has daughter Ava, 15, and son Deacon, 11, with Ryan, was devastated when she read a critical article about herself in The New Yorker in 2012.
She said: "I thought I was reading, like, a profile on another actor. Then somewhere down at the end it said ... 'the people who are washed-up' - I mean, it really hurt my feelings."
Reese, who married Hollywood agent Jim Toth in 2011, with whom she has son Tennessee, two, previously admitted she spent a lot of time crying on the floor after her split from Ryan.
She said: I lay on my kitchen floor and cried a lot and I think at a certain point you just wake up and you're like 'OK, I don't want to feel like this anymore.' And you figure your own s**t out. But no one's going to figure it out for you.
"You can't apologise for being a human being. We all feel weak sometimes, sad and distraught, lost."
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