COVER STORY
Now 47, Jen is hotter property than ever. She’s making waves on the big screen, most recently in Horrible Bosses 2, Cake and Mother’s Day – and on the home front, she started a new chapter by marrying Justin Theroux on the quiet.
Why everybody loves Jennifer Aniston
Here’s why everyone loves Jen...
It’s hard to think of a character played by Jennifer Aniston that we didn’t adore. Even when she’s playing less-than-loveable characters, we get over it very quickly. In fact, Daniel Barnz, director of Cake, cast Jen as Claire Simmons – a prickly ‘bitch’ (in Claire’s words) who suffers from chronic pain – because, says Barnz, ‘we had to cast somebody who you can forgive immediately’. Jen also highlights the complexity of the character, saying that while she found Claire endearing and could empathise with her, it was difficult to tell the story without everyone hating her. The film premiered to a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival and Jen received a Golden Globe nomination for her turn as Claire.
More recently, she starred alongside Julia Roberts and Kate Hudson in Garry Marshall’s Mother’s Day. Her character, Sandy, is a divorced mother of two dealing with the challenges of being a single mom and subconsciously competing with her ex’s much younger new girlfriend. They’ve known each other for years, but Jen admits she was still star-struck by Julia. ‘It’s a different thing when you get to work with them and you’re doing what you both do, [but] together,’ she says. ‘I even flubbed the first take and called her Julia!’ And that’s what makes Jen relatable – she has no problem admitting her imperfections.
She never bows to social pressure
The world has fixated on Jen’s love life for years, obsessing over when, or if ever, she’d get married and have kids. Last August she married actor-writer Justin Theroux in a private ceremony, ending a fouryear engagement. ‘There’s something to enjoying the engagement period,’ she says. ‘Whether it’s three months, or two to five years – enjoy it. There’s no rush.’ Then there’s the media that dragged out the ‘poor, sad Jen’ narrative for years. ‘There was a part of me that used to get upset. I was guilty of getting too up in arms about stuff that wasn’t real, phantom boxing with something that’s not even there,’ she told Harper’s Bazaar. ‘Now I’d rather just focus on people and things that are here,
happening, and what’s yet to come. My friends, my family, wonderful people I work with. We know what the “real” is.’
She loves the skin she’s in
Jen is known for her trim, fit physique, so the slightest weight gain puts her in the firing line. But this doesn’t faze her. ‘For the past year and a half I went from being a crazy workout girl to sort of saying, “My body wants a little break.” The only downside to that, of course,
is that there’s that couple of extra pounds and 4 000 pregnancy rumours too. But you know, other than that, it all feels great.’ But this doesn’t mean she doesn’t look after herself. ‘One thing I do on a daily basis is drink a lot of water, practise yoga and eat very healthily,’ she says. She credits good genes with her youthful appearance. ‘Whenever I look at my dad I kind of marvel at how he has hardly any wrinkles, and he’s now 81 … so I’m sure I’ve benefited from that and my Greek heritage.’
Post-40 looks good on her
‘I’ve had more fun post-40 than I can remember – from a work point of view, a physical point of view, a psychotherapeutic point of view,’ she says. In the interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she vehemently rejects common associations that come with growing older. ‘When am I supposed to freak out? When am I supposed to feel like, “Oh, my knee! Oh, ouch!”? I don’t feel any of those things! I feel like our ageing marker needs to be rejigged. I heard Halle Berry refer to her pregnancy at 47 as a “geriatric pregnancy”, which is ridiculous! It’s insulting. Obviously, as women we’ve evolved.’ Jen was named People magazine’s World’s Most Beautiful Woman 2016. She’s flattered by the title, but says she understands that being beautiful starts on the inside. ‘We’ve got to be really mindful of what we put inside our bodies,’ she says. ‘And how we sleep and take care of ourselves. You can get away with a lot in your 20s. Beauty is really learning to love every single thing about yourself,’ she adds. ‘And also realising that it’s not just clothes and what’s happening [on the outside].’
She has a good grip on love and romance
She’s level-headed when it comes to love. Before Justin, she took a break from dating. ‘It really helped me get to a place where I was more comfortable with myself, truly ready for love and for a partner,’ she says. ‘The past wasn’t “less than”. It was extremely important to my growth as a woman. But take the law of attraction: if you only love yourself 70 percent, that’s what’s going to come back to you. So you fill up that 30 percent, then all of a sudden there’s this pure, good love standing right in front of you. Then you realise: “Oh, this can be easy! It doesn’t have to be so hard.”’ Rather than gush about her relationship with Justin, she points to their easy compatibility. ‘It’s almost impossible to get bored with each another. We’ve tried so hard!’
And we get it. We’re not bored with them, either! Quite the opposite, in fact, we’re still smitten with America’s sweetheart.