PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL THOMPSON
As Jennifer Anistonput it to InStyle, “I know when I’m comfortable with something [or someone], and I know when I’m not.”
While the star was talking about her consistency in fashion and colleagues, she might as well be describing her stance on social media. While she’s one of the most famous actresses of our time, she’s stayed away from the platforms that have made and broken careers in the digital age.
As it was explained in the October issue, the cover star “worries about the damaging effects of social media on young people figuring out their identity.”
“They’re doing it through someone else’s lens, which has been filtered and changed…and then it’s ‘like me, don’t like me, did I get liked?’ There’s all this comparing and despairing,” she told the magazine.
As Aniston understands, there’s enough to handle when you’re a young adult. “When I was younger, I was in hell,” she told the magazine in reference to her curly locks. “I tried every product known to man.” Before her breakout role in Friends at 25, she had been on six other TV shows. “I waitressed for years in New York before I got anything. And I was a telemarketer selling time-shares in the Poconos. I didn’t make one sale. I was terrible at it. I was like, ‘Why do we have to call people at dinnertime?'”
Now, she’s an A-list star with more than three decades in the business, including as an executive producer and star of The Morning Show, one of AppleTV+’s first series. “When we found out that we were among one of the first shows to be bought by Apple, Reese [Witherspoon] and I both had this pinch-me moment,” she told InStyle. “The first women to help launch a network as actors and producers, having a beautiful piece of that pie that we really earned and deserved. We had a big toast to that.”
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHAEL THOMPSON
Of course, such a feat came with plenty of work. “To me, a TV series used to mean a studio audience and five cameras. I got in at 10 and was out by 5,” she explained. “The Morning Show was like doing two films back-to-back over seven months. After a full day of shooting, I’d go home and keep working, looking at cuts, weighing in on casting for the next week, preparing for the next day’s work. When the show wrapped, I crawled into my bed for a solid week.”
Aniston’s prep for her role as Alex Levy, one of the morning news co-hosts at the center of the story, included talking to Diane Sawyer and, according to the magazine, “going behind the scenes at Good Morning America at 5 a.m.”
It’s work that has fortunately gotten less rare for actresses beyond 50 years old, which Aniston celebrated in February. “I don’t know what it is because I don’t feel any different. Things aren’t shutting down in any way,” she told the magazine. “I feel physically incredible. So it’s weird that it’s all of a sudden getting telegraphed in a way that’s like, ‘You look amazing for your age.’ I think we need to establish some etiquette around that dialogue and verbiage.”
As for Aniston’s own aging mantra, “I am all about living to whatever age I’m supposed to…as long as I’m thriving.”
The October issue of InStyle is on sale Sept. 20.