Reese Witherspoon for President?

In a new essay, actress Reese Witherspoon owns up to her ambition, which once included aspirations of attaining the nation's highest elected office. Presumably, she's put that ambition aside for now, but she's not setting aside ambition in general. Witherspoon feels like she has a responsibility to support women in Hollywood, and she's working hard to live up to that responsibility. Read on and learn more about her drive.

Via Page Six.

Reese Witherspoon wants to crush the stigma that ambitious women are selfish.

“What the heck is wrong with being ambitious?” she wrote in a new essay for Glamour after reading various articles and studies that claimed women with ambitious traits were viewed as “selfish” and “less worthy of being hired.”

“I have been ambitious all my life. In fact, I vividly remember telling my third-grade teacher that I wanted to be the first female president of the United States. Ambition is simply a drive inside of you—it’s having a curiosity or a new idea and the desire to pursue it,” she wrote.

Witherspoon has proven that ambitious women are the most successful. In 2012, she started her own production company — Pacific Standard — in order to create more roles for women. Some of her producing credits include “Gone Girl,” “Wild” and “Big Little Lies,” which was nominated for 16 Emmys.

“I can tell that I’m considered a player now because of the respect I get from studio heads,” she wrote, noting in the article that every studio but one passed on “Gone Girl” before it became a best-selling book. “They call me back quicker and give me thoughtful responses when I pitch ideas. It has been quite a shift for me.”

She calls out some of the women who have made big changes in the industry over the years like Felicity Jones, Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot, Ava DuVernay, writer Jennifer Lee, directors Nancy Meyers and her daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer.

But there are still challenges.

“Women made up just 29 percent of protagonists in last year’s highest-grossing films—that’s a new high, but come on … it’s not even a third,” she wrote. “The stakes are also much higher for stories about women. There is a lot of pressure to generate a huge profit. When any movie with a group of women starring in it doesn’t make heaps of money, the studio take away is that those types of films ‘aren’t working.’ But the truth is not every movie works.”

Read the rest of the story at Page Six.

Do you agree with Reese Witherspoon that ambition does not equal selfishness? Let us know how you feel in the comment section below.