A new book about the series reveals the pressures that Hollywood put on the actress in order to take the first steps in her career
25 years ago, on September 22, 1994, the United States attended the premiere of what would become one of the most important series in television history: Friends. A format that launched six then unknown actors to fame who became superstars: David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, probably the one with the most solid and lasting career and the who has reached the highest levels of stardom.
Thanks to Friends, Aniston became one of the most important actresses of her generation and a fashion icon, thanks to her refined style and her famous haircuts. However, a new book released now on the occasion of her 25th birthday reveals that the actress did not have it easy to get there and that she was subjected to pressure from the industry because of her physique.
In Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era, author Saul Austerlitz reveals that Aniston "was forced to lose 30 pounds [ 13.6 kilos] if she wanted to continue in the Hollywood industry" and therefore to opt for the role of Rachel Green, who kicked off her career after a small series.
"Los Angeles was a very hard place to be an actress, a very hard place to be a woman, and her agent had a hard time accepting that situation," explains Austerlitz, who recounts how the actress was called after auditioning and asked to out in tights. "That's going to be terrible for me," Aniston allegedly told her agent who "got serious about it," as recorded in the book and as the American portal The Blast now tells.
"Aniston wasn't fat at all," the author assumes, "everyone could see how beautiful she was. But, as the series with which she would one day become perennially associated made her notice, the camera added ten pounds to her" , another almost five kilos.
Aniston has spoken on occasion about her diet and has hinted that this has not been entirely healthy. Thus, he said that for a time he ate "too many mayonnaise sandwiches. Mayonnaise on white bread ... the most delicious thing in the world," he explained to the American magazine Rolling Stone in 1996. In 2010 it was also said that Aniston had fed based on purees and baby food (something, also, unhealthy in the long run), which made her lose three kilos a week, something that she had to deny.
She also explained three years ago that, during the decade that the series lasted, she, Kudrow and Cox ate the same salad every day. A dish invented by Aniston herself and called Jennifer salad whose ingredients were chick peas, minced chicken or turkey, turkey bacon, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, avocado, spring onions, watercress, cheddar cheese and mixed lettuce, dressed with vinaigrette and topped with cheese Rochefort. A mixture that, on a daily basis, is not healthy either, as nutrition experts explained to Buenavida.
