29-year-old Reese Witherspoon, frontrunner to win the best actress award at this weekend's Oscars, is to push earnings for women in the film business to record heights with her next movie reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

Witherspoon is producing and starring in "Our Family Trouble", about a mother fighting demons possessing her child in Witherspoon's native South. The actress is expected earn $US30 million for the role - overtaking the previous $25 million record set by Julia Roberts for 2003's "Mona Lisa Smile".

The actress wants to film near her childhood haunts in Tennessee. "It's about a young child in peril, which as a mother I can appreciate. There is nothing scarier" she says.