LOS ANGELES: Eight years after winning an Oscar for “Walk the Line,” Reese Witherspoon is taking another stroll toward Hollywood glory — but this time, it’s a grueling 1,100-mile solo hike.

At least that’s what her character undertakes in “Wild,” a film based on the best-selling, real-life story of a woman’s three-month trek along the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from California to the Canadian border.

“This movie was definitely one of the hardest movies I’ve made in my entire life,” the 38-year-old Witherspoon told reporters ahead of the film’s US release this week.

Critics have already rewarded her with glowing reviews, with the Hollywood Reporter describing it as a “vivid wilderness adventure film that is also a powerful story of family anguish and survival.”

The film is based on the 2012 bestseller “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” by Cheryl Strayed, adapted for the big screen by award-winning British writer Nick Hornby.

Directed by Canadian Jean-Marc Vallee — whose “Dallas Buyers Club” won three Oscars earlier this year — the film tells the tale of Strayed’s hike from the Mojave desert north along the snow-covered Sierra Nevada to Washington state.

Strayed embarked on the epic adventure at the age of 26, in part to exorcise the demons of a failed marriage and her mother’s death, which had sent her into a downward spiral of drugs.

Witherspoon — who won the Academy Award for best actress for her role in 2005’s “Walk the Line,” a biopic about country music legend Johnny Cash — said: “There were so many gritty scenes that I had to tackle. That was definitely very daunting.

“The other aspect that was difficult was the emotional truth and honesty... You don’t really discover why Cheryl’s on this hike until halfway through the film. And as soon as you do, you’re just rooting for her to finish.”