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.
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.”
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.
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.'”
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.”
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
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.
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.
