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Jennifer Aniston’s story has touched the hearts of men and women around the world. She is the girl next door, witty, charming and with a smile that lights up a room. Men want to be with her and women can identify with her. She was, she admits, more of a professional waitress than an actress before her role as Rachel in Friends transformed her life.
At the height of her TV fame Jennifer fell in love with Brad Pitt. They married in 2000, becoming Hollywood’s golden couple. She was on more magazine covers than any other celebrity and was named as Hollywood’s most powerful celebrity, earning $35 million in 2002 alone. After four years, however, her life became a nightmare when her marriage broke down; her obvious despair was there for the whole world to see and since then her life has become a tabloid sensation as her relationships have been, and continue to be, relentlessly analyzed by the media. If anything, the new vulnerable Jennifer is even more popular than the vivacious Rachel version, when she had the most copied hairstyle in the world.
Based on in-depth new research, Jennifer shows how she has fought back, and reveals the true woman behind the Rachel Green façade. It is an affectionate and insightful portrait of one of our most popular stars.
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“Jennifer had a short-lived incarnation as a ‘Durannie’, a band of pre-teen and teen girls who would eat, sleep and generally breathe all things Duran Duran. Jennifer’s principle interest was the pouting lead singer, Simon Le Bon. She thought he had a sexy voice and described him as ‘cute’. Jennifer has always described boys or men that she has fancied as either ‘cute’ (Simon Le Bon) or ‘hot’ (Brad Pitt). As well as being for a while in the eighties the biggest band in the UK, Duran Duran were one of the few British groups to travel successfully across the Atlantic.
Jennifer made sure she collected every Duran Duran album, including the European imports. She would sneak round to a friend’s house to watch her idols on MTV and practically wore out her copies of the videos. So she was thrilled to discover that Simon and the boys were going to be at a store in Times Square one Saturday to sign copies of their latest album. Jennifer was up with the larks expecting to be one of the first in the queue. Unfortunately, several hundred fans had the same idea and the line already stretched round the block when she arrived. Patiently she waited, getting nearer and nearer, clutching a red rose for Simon. Eventually there were only four girls in front of her on the street and she felt that she could almost touch the boys. At that precise moment they locked the doors. The signing was over, leaving Jennifer and the remaining fans distraught. The rose was angrily consigned to a bin on the way to the subway.”
what sean says
It was a baking hot day in Laurel Canyon, the legendary neighbourhood of Los Angeles which at one time or another has been home to The Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison and Marilyn Manson and many more – including Jennifer Annison. I was on my way to look at her old house in Ridgemont Drive when I stopped off at the Laurel Canyon Country Store for a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. Casually I asked the charming owner if he ever came across Jennifer when she lived up this way. ‘Sure, she used to work here,’ he said smiling with more than a hint of an Italian accent.
I couldn’t believe my luck although I suppose there weren’t too many options in the area for an out-of-work actress – just a shoe repairer’s, a handbag shop and a laundry. ‘What did she do here?’ A young man looked up from the till and announced, ‘She was me.’ He explained that he did a bit of everything including making sandwiches, stacking shelves and taking the money. After she left she would still pop in most days for cigarettes because her then boyfriend lived across the way.
As I sat munching my sandwich on the store’s shady veranda I thought how brilliant it would have been to have walked into the store in the late eighties and have Jennifer make my lunch. Would I have recognized her as a star in the making, or thought her just one of the thousands of resting actresses that are everywhere in this city of dreams?
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