filed under: Reese Witherspoon

She might be an Oscar-winning actress but to her two kids, Reese Witherspoon is sometimes, well, just embarrassing, she says in a new interview.

To illustrate her point, the actress tells the story to Parents magazine of taking her 9-year-old daughter Ava to see country star Carrie Underwood.

"She said, 'Mom I really appreciate you taking me to the concert, but will you please not embarrass me in front of Carrie Underwood by singing because she's a real singer and you're just, like a movie singer," says Witherspoon, who won a Best Actress Oscar for playing singer June Carter Cash in 2005's Walk the Line.

But apparently her vocal chops haven't impressed her daughter. "I love to sing around the house and in the car," she says, "but my daughter hates it."

Still, she appreciates that Ava and son Deacon, 5, see her as just their mom. "Realizing you're not anything special to the kids is always a great sort of reminder that you're just a regular person," the actress tells the magazine, which hits newsstands Feb. 17. "A regular embarrassing old mom."

Just 24 hours after Reese Witherspoon arrived in London to visit Jake Gyllenhaal, she coaxed him into a sex toys and underwear emporium for a private strip show.

While shopping in a Myla boutique on the West End, Reese beckoned her beau into the changing rooms, where she surprised him with a private strip show. Jake watched — with a smile plastered across his face — as Reese slipped out of her clothes and wiggled into various bra and panty sets, including an itsy-bitsy pair of purple panties and a matching push-up bra.

Reese's private show seemed to have the desired effect — Jake brought some items up to the cash register, then Reese paid with her credit card.

"Clearly, that purple set did it for him," clerk Vanessa Brown tells Star. "Reese has a really fit body. She looks fantastic. She's petite... but I'm not telling her bra size!"

On the way out of the store, the lovebirds stopped, giggling at a display of sex toys. Reese pointed to a black spoon-shaped gadget designed for "all over body massage as well as more intimate use" and dissolved in fits of laughter.

Reese Witherspoon and her two children have just moved into a £1.9 million house in the cosmopolitan district of “Notting Hill” to be closer to her love Jake Gyllenhaal.

The romantic 32-year-old star, which was considered as the Hollywood’s highest paid actress, took a four-month break from work so she can be closer to Brokeback Mountain actor Jake, who is currently filming in London.

New mom Halle Berry is engaged to her boyfriend Gabriel Aubry after he gave her his grandmother’s ring.

“Gabriel felt the time was right to propose. He gave her the family heirloom because he wanted to show her how much she means to him, and how she will be accepted into the Aubry family,” a source close to the couple said.

“The ring belonged to Gabriel’s grandmother – it was her engagement ring.”

The ‘X Men’ actress, 41, was snapped flashing the diamond ring in Hollywood this past weekend.

Berry gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, Nahla Ariela, in March.

Halle and Gabriel, 32, started dating in November 2005.

Sitting in a cozy booth at the Hominy Grill in Charleston, S.C., on May 3, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal were the picture of happiness. Though the cheery couple, who arrived holding hands, brought their appetites, their minds weren't on food.

"They couldn't keep their eyes off each other," Hominy Grill manager Brandy Mangum tells OK!. "The entire time, he was so attentive. It was really sweet. They really do make the perfect couple."

Friends of the pair say it won't be long now before Jake pops the question to his lady love. "They've been talking marriage for a while," a source close to Reese reveals to OK!. "They'll be formally engaged any day now. They want to spend the rest of their lives together."

But don't expect these two to go down the route of so many Hollywood couples who move in together and start families before getting hitched. "This is a very serious relationship," the Oscar-winner's pal explains. "But Reese is very conservative and traditional. I'm sure she doesn't want her kids to see her 'living in sin.'"

When asked about their clients' plans for walking down the aisle, Reese's rep had no comment, while Jake's people claim there are no immediate plans for a wedding.

Reese Witherspoon is obsessed with "trash".

The 'Legally Blonde' actress often sneaks out in the middle of the night to check on her neighbours' garbage.

She said: "I'm very obsessed with trash. I like to throw a lot of things away, particularly at Christmas. It makes me a little crazy when the trash is overflowing. I put on rubber boots and I literally get into the trash can and stomp on it.

"My son Deacon calls me 'The Mommy Trash Compactor'! Sometimes I'll sneak and look at the neighbours' garbage cans and see if it's kind of empty. I'll wait, literally until the middle of the night when the children are asleep, and I'll take my extra garbage and I'll put it in the can!"

The 31-year-old beauty also revealed her bizarre obsession runs in the family.

She added to US TV chat show host Ellen DeGeneres: "At Christmas time, I was talking to my brother, and I was like, 'Sometimes I sneak out the garbage and I put it in other people's cans.'

"And he goes, 'So do I!' I'm so embarrassed, but it's so true. I just feel better after telling someone!"

Reese Witherspoon wants her children to be bullied at school.

The 'Legally Blonde' actress - who has two children, eight-year-old Ava and Deacon, four, from her marriage to Ryan Philippe - says being teased in school helps build character.

She said: "I wouldn't want my children to miss out on any of that teasing and bullying - don't you think it kind of makes you who you are? This drives me crazy about today. Everyone wins the award and then, you know, everybody is a Most Valuable Player (MVP)? No! They're not! OK?

"I distinctly recall the two weeks of crying because I didn't make the softball team. It made me interesting. Hopefully, it helps kids really understand who they are. You know, figure out who they are."

"If [actresses] take their clothes off, they objectify themselves. I am flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do it . . . I am a role model for my children."

According to a family friend, the kids love Jake so much that when it’s time for Reese to hand them over to Ryan, little Deacon can’t stop talking about Jake. “It’s Jake did this, Jake brought mommy flowers and coffee, Jake says we should recycle,” the friend tells OK!

It’s reportedly taking it’s toll on Ryan. “Ryan called Reese and suggested she stop letting him (Jake) spend so much time with the kids,” the insider tells OK! “He was pretty irate on the phone. Reese barely let him finish the sentence before she shot back that what she does with her personal life is her business.”

Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal may have joined the ‘Mile High Club’.

The Hollywood couple allegedly spent more than ten-minutes together inside an airplane bathroom, according to U.S reports.

Witherspoon, 31, and Jake, 26, were flying together from Frankfurt, Germany, to Los Angeles after a trip to the Rome Film Festival.

“Reese was dressed in all black and wearing shades when she and about six handlers entered Lufthansa’s first class lounge,” an eyewitness told Star magazine.

“It wasn’t until she was already on the plane that we realized Jake, also dressed in black, had boarded separately.”

After the two-hour flight from Rome to Frankfurt, the lovebirds were transferred to their trans-Atlantic connection on a special bus. Once onboard the group occupied ten out of 16 seats in the first class section of the 747 plane.

“Reese and Jake kissed and cuddled together under a blanket in her recliner seat in the back row,” the witness continued.

Three hours into the flight, Reese reportedly got up from her seat and walked forward to the toilet. Two minutes later Jake got up and allegedly walked into the same bathroom. “I started timing them - they were together in there for 11-minutes,” the witness told Star.

Jake came out of the bathroom first, and Reese reportedly followed him three-minutes later. “When they each walked by, it seemed like everyone in their entourage took pains to look away.

“Jake worked on his laptop, and then he and Reese took a nap side by side.”

Though sources say the duo, who began dating in March (five months after her split from Ryan Phillippe, 32), had been getting serious in recent weeks – he bonded with her two kids and met her mom – Us Weekly has learned the couple have cooled.

“She has either called it off or is just taking a break,” says a Witherspoon source.

The hitch? If may have been too much, too soon for the actress, 31, still smarting from her divorce.

“She cares for Jake, but the timing is crappy,” says the insider. “She doesn’t have enough emotional space for him right now.”

Sources say the star – who has been hunkering down at home because “she’s worried that when she’s in public, everyone’s talking about her failed marriage” – is staying strong for the kids.

Alas, it seems it will be just the three of them for a while longer.

A source says that Gyllenhaal recently told a buddy: “I’m single.”