Jennifer Aniston Just Got Real About Turning 50—And Says Her Career Is About to “Bloom”
On November 1, Jennifer Aniston will debut her first major TV role since she embodied Friends’ well-loved shopaholic Rachel Green. She was 25 when she stepped into that character’s designer shoes. Now, at 50, she’s anticipating the introduction of Alex Levy, a serious morning news anchor and protagonist of Apple’s The Morning Show. Some would call her early accomplishments a life’s worth of success, but in a new interview with The New York Times, Aniston insisted that her career has only just begun.
In the interview, she reflected on the milestone placed by her February 11 birthday. “It’s so weird. There’s so much doom around that number,” she said. “I’m entering into what I feel is one of the most creatively fulfilling periods of my life … Seriously, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I feel like it’s just about to really bloom.”
She echoed the same sentiment in her cover story for InStyle’s October issue. “Fifty was the first time I thought, ‘Well, that number,’” Aniston told the outlet. “I don’t know what it is because I don’t feel any different. Things aren’t shutting down in any way. 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.”
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There are many contributing factors to that feeling of Aniston’s, but one of them is undoubtedly that, even after her Friends fame erupted, TV producers wouldn’t take her seriously. Now, she runs her own production company, Echo Films, alongside her longtime friend Kristin Hahn, and they’re calling the shots. “Now actors are taken more seriously as producers,” Hahn said. “But when we started, even though Jen had been on a TV series for eight years, it was still a little like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute.’”
“Our mission statement was, ‘Tell strong stories about strong women,’” Aniston added. “Flawed, complicated, messy. ’Cause that wasn’t happening.” To enforce that, they’re currently working on a political comedy for Netflix called First Ladies in which Aniston stars as the first lesbian president, as well as The Goree Girls, a production focused on one of the first all-women country bands.
Aniston’s part as Levy is opposite of a predatory co-anchor played by Steve Carell, who ultimately gets fired for his behavior. Then a younger reporter played by Reese Witherspoon enters the picture, and the two women take it from there. In the process, Levy faces discrimination against her identity as a woman, as a professional, and as a person who has surpassed her “sell-by date.”
Having lived so much of her life in the public eye, Aniston is, unfortunately, able to relate to those experiences. But she used them as fuel for Levy, concluding that she could never have played her a younger age. “I didn’t have the experience,” she said.
Right now, at 50, she’s proud of where she and her career stand. “It’s taken time for me to get where I am and I put a lot of work into my craft,” she said. “I’ve failed. I’ve succeeded. I’ve overcome. I’ve, you know, I’ve stayed around. I’m still here.”
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