Jennifer Aniston: the triumphant return of the woman who overcame all prejudice and overcame all storms
She was Rachel in Friends and she dazzled half the planet. She reigned in comedies while she lived her own love and heartbreak story with Brad Pitt and her world demanded that she have children. She is a specialist in reinventing herself, she breaks records on the networks and imposes herself in a new fiction
Before a new love, grandmothers used to repeat a kind of mantra: "The important thing is not to attract but to maintain". If the saying were transferred to the careers of some artists, it could be ensured that the important thing "is not to start but to stay". Hollywood history is full of artists who started brilliantly, were magazine covers, starred in great successes and One day, sometimes due to bad personal decisions and others simply because of those mysteries of life, they stopped being the favorites of the public and the producers. People who seemed "born to succeed" and yet, were forgotten. But there are wonderful exceptions that manage to maintain their validity among the public and producers despite their personal situations.Such is the case of Jennifer Aniston, the actress who shone before the world, had to overcome ups and downs and today returns, triumphant, to stand out before millions of viewers.
For the artist the beginnings were not easy. For years she participated in different television projects that were canceled after a few months, such as the Ferris Bueller series. It seemed that her luck was elusive until 1983 when she was called to star in a comedy that narrated the adventures of five friends in New York: Friends. The series was a global success and 26 years after its premiere, it still has fans around the world. Jennifer and hers Rachel Green's were among the most popular. Few knew that to achieve the role she had been required to lose at least 13 kilos and that during the years that the series lasted she only ate a salad. Jennifer was shown as a character of those who are defined as "angels". She began to top the rankings that Americans like so much as "the best hair in the United States", "the best smile", "the friend we all want to have".
And, in the midst of her great popularity peak, she fell in love with none other than the actor who headed the ranking of the "most beautiful man in the world": the beautiful Brad Pitt. Successful, popular, international, everything they did became news. Every time they appeared together it was obvious that they had a great time.
They were married in Malibu on July 29, 2000. The expectation for the wedding was so great that each guest signed a confidentiality agreement. The ceremony was held in a white tent so that no one took pictures. Hermeticism was respected by each attendee, so much so that a photo of Aniston with her wedding dress and full body could never be seen. The party cost a million dollars. As only two photographs of the wedding emerged, the rumor that the bride and groom had gotten blonde streaks of the same tone to be "deceived" could never be disproved or verified.
But being the most popular artist in the world, married to the most beautiful man in the world, does not save you from having your heart broken. Suddenly the actors separated and at the time he was in a relationship with Angeline Jolie who used to lead the ranking of the "sexiest woman in the world".
If accepting that the other stopped loving you is difficult, it should be much more so when you are followed by photographers from and everywhere. Surely Jennifer would have wanted to cry curled up in an armchair, but no. Her footsteps were followed by photographers, journalists and fans who wanted to know how she was, how she looked, how she put up with it.
And she decided that she would not give up. She did what women who own their destiny usually do. She cried alone, put on her best smile and went out to face the world, of course with the small detail that dozens of paparazzi followed her.
Many years later, far from the scandals and bill passes with her ex, the actress acknowledged: “I wouldn't know what I know now if I hadn't married Brad. I really want it. He is a fantastic man. I do not regret anything. We spent very intense years together and learned many things from each other. It was a beautiful and complicated relationship.”
But although there was no place for reproaches to her ex-partner, there was for certain press: “What seemed sad to me was the way everything was reduced to a Hollywood cliché. I feel very sorry for the people who are going through this right now."
And perhaps one of her greatest learnings was that from then on her life would no longer be private to be public and there would be no confidentiality agreement or tent to protect her.
If Brad quarreled with Angelina, it was said that it was because he went back to Jennifer and if Brad was happy with her, he looked for her unhappy photo. If Brad became a father, the tabloids highlighted that she did not become a mother. She became the celebrity who was pregnant the most times without ever being pregnant. She even went so far as to say that she had resorted to a surrogate belly. Fed up with living in a state of "permanent denial," she wrote a long letter to the Huffington Post. She there she firmly clarified that she was not pregnant and denounced something obvious: "The way the press portrays me is only a reflection of how society sees and portrays women in general."
But when the subject was not Jennifer's figure, the actress had to deal with the curiosity that her romances aroused. She had one with Vince Vaughn that ended when he got fed up with the press harassment. Another with John Mayer and fleeting relationships with model Paul Sculfor and actor Gerald Butler.
She finally fell in love with Justin Theroux. They were together for seven years and married for two, when they separated they agreed to share custody of Dolly, their dog. Apparently, the reason for the breakup was not lack of love, but that he wanted to continue her life in New York and she was not willing to move from Los Angeles. But the rumors said otherwise and again Jennifer clarified that the problem had not been the search for a child and claimed her right not to be a mother: "There is pressure on women to be mothers (...) Perhaps my purpose in this planet is not the one to procreate," he declared in an interview in InStyle magazine.
If the rumors were unstoppable, her career and her fortune too: in just two decades her "savings" exceeded 200 million dollars. She won Emmys, Golden Globes and Actors Guild Awards, and became the queen of romantic comedy. But he continued to emphasize what he did not have (a son, a consolidated couple) before what he did have left over (success, fortune, recognition, work, friends and a great body that seemed not to know that "years pass for all").
Tired of the pressure and of being placed in a place of sadness that was not her own, she returned to establish a position in Elle magazine: "We live in a society that sends certain messages to women at a certain age: you must be married and you should have sons. That is the mold that we are slowly trying to break -she declared- What determines happiness in someone's life is not the ideal that was created in the 50's. You don't hear that story for men. This is part of machismo, the woman is always the despised, the disconsolate and the spinster. It's never the other way around."
And it was true: Jennifer reached that age feared by many women, 50. That moment in which many become invisible to society and Hollywood is no exception. Incredible actresses were there to show that after 50 they were only paid attention for their bad surgeries but that the good projects never came. There were plenty of examples: Meg Ryan, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner and many others when they stopped being "sexy bombs" although they continued to be good actresses, they stopped receiving good work projects, except for the exception that confirms the rule and is called Meryl Streep.
The big question was: how would Jennifer Aniston, America's ex-girlfriend, the unforgettable Rachel Green, be affected by turning 50? And it is then that the actress once again demonstrated her power.
She began breaking viewership records on the Netflix platform when she premiered Criminals at Sea alongside her great friend Adam Sandler. In one week she was seen by twenty million people. This led her to a place on the Forbes list as one of the highest paid in Hollywood.
It is true: he has not yet received an Oscar but a neuron bears his name. The story is like this. It turns out that a scientist discovered that there are certain neurons that react only to certain specific people. He verified it by noticing that the brain of the test volunteers was activated only when they were shown the image of… Jennifer Aniston. So he tested his theory and named the neuron after the actress.
As if all this were not enough, one day he decided to venture into social networks. Although he had declared that he would never have a profile on them because "it's hard enough being a kid and finding yourself, but now you have social networks that add extra pressure to see if someone likes or dislikes something you did. We are creating these new challenges that are a drag”, in October he decided to join Instagram. He opened it with a current photo of the five protagonists of Friends and surpassed one million followers in less than six hours.
Currently, the actress returned to her first great love, television, and she stars in The Morning Show, the series chosen for the launch of Apple TV, where she also plays the role of producer. It's obviously a hit.
Aniston surely does not know the tango that says: "You poor spinster you have stayed, without hope, without faith...". If she ever listens to him, she will surely not understand it, the problem will not be the language or the culture, but rather that she sings to a woman that she is not, she was not and much less will be. And that certainly should not disprove it.
