Reese Witherspoon has sacrificed dream roles for her family.

Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon

The 'Big Little Lies' actress - who has Ava, 17, and Deacon, 13, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe and four-year-old Tennessee with spouse Jim Toth - admits she "really needs to think" about taking on each project and working out how it would fit around her home life.

She said: "Every time a movie comes up, I balance my kids' wants and needs versus my own.

"My job takes me far away, I have to travel to different countries and I might not see them until the weekend when I'm exhausted, so when I take a movie, I really need to think about that.

"Right now, Ava is applying for college, so I don't work on acting jobs.

"There have been several movies I wanted to make and didn't because of my kids and I wish I had made them."

But the 41-year-old beauty likes to involve her brood in her career and her life choices.

She told Red magazine: "They come on set sometimes and that's really special. It was harder when they were younger, because they didn't understand. Now I pitch them ideas about my movies."

Reese can next be seen as a divorcee with two young children in 'Home Again' and she thinks the themes of the movie will strike a chord with many women.

She said: "There are so many ideas in the movie that women are experiencing at different ages.

"Getting divorced in your 40s, taking over a new home, trying to re-enter the workforce after having kids and not working.

"I have a lot of friends that are questioning whether they should ever have given up their job. 'Am I not valuable because I'm older? Have I done myself a disadvantage by taking care of the children for so long?' Questions people are grappling with all the time.

"I love films that deal with real-life conflict and find beautiful resolution."