Young Elena

Seen in flashback, young Elena is a bright, ambitious college student with a scholarship, a byline she's proud of, and a plan for a life bigger than Shaker Heights. She is confident, a little reckless, still deciding who she's going to be before circumstance starts making those choices for her.

AnnaSophia Robb plays her as the person adult Elena keeps trying to forget she used to be — looser, hungrier, unafraid of mess. The flashbacks work because they don't excuse the woman she becomes so much as explain the specific ambition she buried, giving Witherspoon's control-freak polish an aching, traceable origin.