Tragic Details About Jennifer Aniston
From the outside looking in, Jennifer Aniston seemingly has it all. Beauty, fame, wealth — all the things that anyone would associate with the star of one of the world's most successful TV shows, who famously earned $1 million per episode when "Friends" was at its peak. And while Aniston does indeed possess all those attributes, it's only part of the story.
In fact, scratching the surface uncovers a very different reality: a wounded child still bruised by issues brought about by a difficult relationship with her parents, who's also experienced failure in her career (she starred in no less than four failed TV shows before "Friends"), yet soldiered on to pave her own way. That could be a part of why fans have connected so solidly with Aniston, and continue to do so.
While she has gone on to flourish in her four decades in show business, it's also true that Aniston's success has come at a cost. The victories she has achieved have been tinged with no shortage of sorrow.
Her fear of being underwater originates from a childhood incident
An accident from Jennifer Aniston's childhood still resonates with her; one that has left her with a severe phobia that she has yet to overcome and possibly never will. "I drove my tricycle into a swimming pool when I was five," she explained in an interview with Extra. "And I didn't let go. And I sunk to the bottom ... I was not a bright child." Luckily, one of Aniston's brothers was there and saw what had happened. Acting quickly, he dove in and pulled her to safety.
Decades later, the trauma from that frightening incident continued to stick with her. "I can't go underwater and no one will believe me," she explained in an interview with E! News. "I honestly can't."
The lingering effects of that childhood experience came into play when Aniston was filming her 2014 feature, "Cake." In the film, Aniston's character deals with lingering trauma from a horrific accident, which she addresses by undergoing water therapy. In those scenes, the script called for her to submerge herself underwater in a swimming pool — something she found exceedingly difficult to accomplish. As Aniston told Extra, she held weights in her hands for the scene, in which she's supposed to descend to the bottom of the pool. "I just couldn't," she admitted. "It took 30-some-odd takes for me to finally get any kind of take that you saw me sort of going down."
She felt 'unsafe' as a child
Jennifer Aniston's childhood wasn't a particularly happy one. This, she explained during a conversation with fellow actor Sandra Bullock for Interview, was largely due to the fractious relationship between her parents, actors John Aniston (of "Days of Our Lives" fame) and Nancy Dow. Asked by Bullock to reveal what keeps her so positive even when things don't turn out the way she'd hoped, Aniston credited that particular facet of her personality to her parents' fraught marriage.
"It comes from growing up in a household that was destabilized and felt unsafe," she divulged. "Watching adults being unkind to each other, and witnessing certain things about human behavior that made me think: 'I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that. I don't want to experience this feeling I'm having in my body right now. I don't want anyone else that I ever come in contact with ever to feel that,'" she opened up about her parents' up-and-down relationship.
Aniston eventually came to the conclusion that she would do everything in her power to break that cycle to not replicate, consciously or unconsciously, the behavior she'd witnessed as a child. "You can either be angry or be a martyr, or you can say, 'You've got lemons? Let's make lemonade,'" she explained.
The trauma of her parents' divorce affected her own love life
Jennifer Aniston's parents' marriage ended when she was just 9 years old. She learned that they were divorcing in dramatic fashion; when she returned home from attending a friend's birthday, her mother informed her that her father had left them. "He was quick," Aniston joked ruefully during a 2004 interview with Diane Sawyer. "There one minute, and yeah, I think it was like ripping off a Band-Aid, probably be easier that way, than a sit-down and that whole ... you know, so it was pretty quick."
While her parents' divorce calmed the combative atmosphere that had characterized her childhood home life, it also proved to be a deeply traumatic time for young Aniston. A big part of that had to do with the abrupt exit of her father, who essentially disappeared from her life for a full year while he was also pursuing a new relationship.
When she grew older, Aniston came to realize that childhood experience left her with an aversion to embarking on serious relationships of her own, given that she had nothing to model what a healthy marital partnership was supposed to look like. "It was always a little bit difficult for me in relationships," she told the WSJ. Magazine. "My parents, watching my family's relationship, didn't make me kind of go, 'Oh, I can't wait to do that.'"
She always felt judged by her mother
Throughout her life, Jennifer Aniston never felt like she could live up to the expectations set by her mother, actor and model Nancy Dow. Growing up, Aniston recalled that her mother had an intense focus on appearance, which led to a barrage of maternal criticism. "Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning," Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter. "I wasn't." In that interview, Aniston noted some of Dow's other less-desirable qualities that put a wedge between them. "She had a temper. I can't tolerate that," Aniston said. "She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty."
Instead of taking on those traits, Aniston explained that her mother's behavior gave her a sense of how not to act, a sort of roadmap to life in terms of pitfalls to avoid and detours to make. "I knew that this person was giving me an example of what I'd never want to be, and I will never ever be that," Aniston shared in a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Ultimately, Aniston came to understand that her mother's behavior toward her was, in her own warped way, an expression of love. "It wasn't her trying to be a b***h or knowing she would be making some deep wounds that I would then spend a lot of money to undo," she told Elle. "She did it because that was what she grew up with."
Her mother's tell-all book led to a huge rift
The mother-daughter dynamic between Jennifer Aniston and mom Nancy Dow had never been great, but it turned downright frigid in 1999 with the publication of "From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir," a tell-all book Dow wrote under her married name, Nancy Aniston, in order to capitalize on her daughter's "Friends" fame. The "Murder Mystery" actor was reportedly blindsided by the book, feeling it to be a massive betrayal by the one person whom she should have trusted the most.
The book led to an estrangement between the two that lasted for a decade; so bitter were her feelings toward her mom that Aniston refused to invite her to attend her wedding to Brad Pitt in 2000. "I never thought my mom would not know my husband," Aniston told interviewer Diane Sawyer in 2004 of the state of their relationship at that time.
However, that chill eventually began to thaw. In a 2005 interview with Vanity Fair, Aniston revealed that she and her mother were both making moves toward reconciliation, even though it hadn't yet happened. "We're taking baby steps," she shared. "It's a good thing." Aniston and her mom ultimately did repair their relationship. "We're all fine," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, commenting on where she and her mom stood. Dow died in 2016 at the age of 79. "I forgave my mom," Aniston shared in a 2022 interview with Allure.
She discovered she has dyslexia
Ever since Jennifer Aniston was a child, she struggled academically. Over time, she'd come to accept that perhaps she simply didn't possess the same level of intelligence as her classmates. "I thought I wasn't smart. I just couldn't retain anything," she admitted in a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. It wasn't until she was in her 20s, however, that she learned there was another reason for why she lagged behind others in school: she was dyslexic. "Now I had this great discovery," she recalled. "I felt like all of my childhood trauma-dies, tragedies, dramas were explained."
According to Aniston, her diagnosis of dyslexia came about by accident. "The only reason I knew [that I had it] was because I went to get a prescription for glasses," she said, explaining how an eye examination revealed the origin of her issues with reading. "And I had to read a paragraph, and they gave me a quiz, gave me 10 questions based on what I'd just read, and I think I got three right."
The doctors further tested the movement pattern of her eyes as she read the words in front of her. "My eyes would jump four words and go back two words, and I also had a little bit of a lazy eye, like a crossed eye, which they always have to correct in photos," she revealed.
Both her marriages ended in divorce
In 2000, Jennifer Aniston walked down the aisle with actor Brad Pitt, with the Malibu wedding reportedly costing a cool million dollars (or twice the cost of Aniston's engagement ring). During their marriage, they walked red carpets together, and Pitt even guested on an episode of "Friends." Just a few years later, in January 2005, they announced they were separating. By the end of the year, their divorce was finalized.
A decade later, Aniston wed for the second time, this time to actor and writer Justin Theroux. That marriage ended up being shorter; in February 2018, the couple issued a statement announcing that they'd split — "mutually and lovingly" — the previous year.
Aniston has remained on good terms with both of her ex-husbands; after the newly single Pitt attended her 50th birthday party in 2018, fans began pining for the two to get back together. They didn't, but have reportedly remained friendly. Ditto with Theroux, given that he and Aniston have only had good things to say about each other since their divorce. Despite their brevity, Aniston declared that she doesn't view either of her marriages as failures. "My marriages, they've been very successful, in [my] personal opinion," Aniston told Elle in 2018. "And when they came to an end, it was a choice that was made because we chose to be happy, and sometimes happiness didn't exist within that arrangement anymore."
She wanted to become a mother but that 'ship has sailed'
During her marriage to Justin Theroux, Jennifer Aniston found herself in the midst of a media frenzy when rampant speculation and frequent tabloid reports began claiming that she was pregnant. In 2016, Aniston fired back in a scathing op-ed she wrote for HuffPost. Not only did she set the record straight by declaring she wasn't pregnant, she also took issue with the notion that a woman is defined by her marital and parental status. "We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child," she wrote. "We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies."
Several years later, Aniston revealed why those reports were especially hurtful to her at that time: she and Theroux actually had been trying to start a family. "It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road," she candidly admitted in a 2022 interview with Allure. "All the years and years of speculation ... It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it."
Looking back at her journey, Aniston insisted she had no regrets about the way it had turned out. "The ship has sailed," she said.
She has struggled with insomnia and sleepwalking
Each year, nearly one-quarter of Americans will experience insomnia, and Jennifer Aniston is among them. As she explained to People in 2022, at a certain point she began to feel the impact of sleep deprivation on her body. "I think it started somewhere in my 30s or even earlier, but you just don't start to notice the effects of a lack of sleep when we're younger because we're so invincible," Aniston said. However, as she grew older, she came to understand that the problems she was experiencing at night were hindering her activities during the day.
Realizing she needed to get a handle on her insomnia, her initial efforts to force herself to fall asleep proved to be a flop, as it would make her even more anxious. "The more I worry about it, the harder it is to fall asleep," she added. When she finally would fall asleep, she would sometimes sleepwalk — not even realizing until she started waking herself up by setting off her own house alarm. "I don't think I do that anymore — that was when I was super sleep deprived," she said.
Aniston is not averse to using apps to help her sleep, telling InStyle in 2021 that she utilized no less than five different ones. "I have this little device just for sleep apps and meditations, and I've been trying to go to bed earlier," she said. "It's hard."
She dealt with a dangerously unstable stalker
For actors, Hollywood success is usually accompanied by fame and fortune. As has often been the case, the latter is necessary to protect against the perils of the former, when a star must hire security to guard against those whose mental instability pushes them over the line into stalker territory.
Sadly, Jennifer Aniston has been the target of stalkers. And while stars — particularly those of her caliber — tend to hush these things up so as not to attract others with similar intentions, one of Aniston's stalkers made headlines back in 2010. TMZ reported the actor had obtained a restraining order after a man named Jason Peyton was arrested at a place Aniston was said to frequent, outfitted with a sharp item that could be used as a weapon, along with a roll of duct tape. When he was apprehended by authorities, Peyton was also in possession of several letters to Aniston.
When he was taken into custody, police located his vehicle, but it wasn't difficult to identify considering that he had scratched "I LOVE JENNIFER ANISTON" into the sides of the car. "Peyton is an obsessed, mentally ill and delusional stalker — with a history of violence and criminal stalking — who drove cross-country in his delusional 'mission' to locate and marry [Aniston], with whom he believes he is in a relationship," stated court documents obtained by the outlet.
She's constantly harassed by paparazzi
When Jennifer Aniston wrote her 2016 HuffPost op-ed excoriating the media for its obsession with whether or not she was pregnant, she referenced the army of paparazzi that has relentlessly stalked her. "Every day my husband and I are harassed by dozens of aggressive photographers staked outside our home who will go to shocking lengths to obtain any kind of photo, even if it means endangering us or the unlucky pedestrians who happen to be nearby," she wrote, offering a window into the downside of life as a celebrity.
Of course, Aniston has experienced her own personal dust-ups with the paparazzi before. In 2005, she launched a lawsuit against a paparazzo who — armed with a telephoto lens and an absence of scruples — took photos of her sunbathing topless in her backyard. Those photos ended up in European magazines, before ultimately being published in such magazines as High Society and Celebrity Skin.
Attempting to defend his actions in an interview with ABC News Radio (via ABC News), photographer Peter Brandt claimed that when he sent those photos to publications, it was by "mistake" — he claimed he only meant to send the non-privacy-invading photos he took. The case was ultimately settled, with Aniston awarded $550,000.
She feels the media has 'shamed' her with sexist headlines
Jennifer Aniston's paparazzi problem was only half of the abuse she endured from the tabloid press, which regularly accompanied those photos with scurrilous stories that, in many cases, contained not even a grain of truth. Meanwhile, even the reports that weren't completely bogus Aniston found were often tinged with a decidedly misogynistic point of view.
She explained in a 2016 interview with Marie Claire, the media's constant spin on her life was why she decided to fire back with her HuffPost op-ed. "My marital status has been shamed; my divorce status was shamed; my lack of a mate had been shamed; my nipples have been shamed," she said. "It's like, 'Why are we only looking at women through this particular lens of picking us apart? Why are we listening to it?' I just thought: 'I have worked too hard in this life and this career to be whittled down to a sad, childless human.'"
Aniston had more to say on that topic in a 2018 interview with InStyle (via People). "I've definitely had my fair share of sexism in the media," Aniston noted. She also called out the typical narrative that plays out in the media during pretty much every celebrity split. "When a couple breaks up in Hollywood, it's the woman who is scorned," she said. "The woman is left sad and alone. She's the failure."
She sought therapy to deal with anxiety and post-divorce depression
When the world shut down in 2020 due to the pandemic, Jennifer Aniston suddenly found herself in a unique position, one in which she hadn't been in for decades: idle. With film and television production halted, and everyone advised to quarantine within their homes, Aniston decided to use this rare period of stillness in her otherwise hectic life to engage in some self-reflection.
For Aniston, that reassessment resulted in resetting her priorities. "My level of anxiety has gone down by eliminating the unnecessary sort of fat in life that I had thought was necessary," she explained in her candid conversation with InStyle in 2021.
During that interview, Aniston was also open about how she'd embraced therapy in order to quell her anxiety while also working on improving herself. "A wonderful amount of trying to understand it," she said. Appearing on the final episode of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Aniston revealed that she first began counseling after her split from Brad Pitt. "I got a divorce and went into therapy," she said.
Her father's death hit her hard
Although her father, soap opera star John Aniston, left Jennifer Aniston and her mother when she was just nine, he ultimately resumed his paternal role in her life. However, that's not to say there weren't some significant issues in their relationship.
"Jen forgave her father for walking out a long time ago. But their relationship has had its ups and downs," a source told the Daily Mail in 2020. According to that source, Aniston hadn't spoken with her father for some time, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, she had something of an epiphany about the brevity of human life. Recognizing her father wouldn't be around for too much longer, she made an effort to reconnect. "He's thrilled that they have reconciled," the source added.
In November 2022, the "Days of Our Lives" star died at the age of 89. Aniston paid tribute in an Instagram post, featuring a vintage photo of her father holding her when she was just an infant. "Sweet papa ... John Anthony Aniston. You were one of the most beautiful humans I ever knew," she wrote in her heartfelt tribute. "I am so grateful that you went soaring into the heavens in peace — and without pain. And on 11/11 no less! You always had perfect timing. That number will forever hold an even greater meaning for me now. I'll love you till the end of time."