Why Jen hates the ‘ex’ files

JENNIFER ANISTON is feeling very relieved.

After years of struggling with her love of smoking, she says she has finally managed to kick the dreaded habit. The tabloid speculation about her every move and gesture, including the latest speculation that her (modest) weight gain must have to do with pregnancy, is something she says she has long ago ceased to pay attention to and for her, that’s also a relief.

“I’ve been wanting to stop smoking for years. I’ve gained a couple of pounds of course, who doesn’t? But now the speculation is of course that I’m pregnant!” she says, laughing, but not in an amused way. “There’s like this check list of crap that gets written about me all the time. Like I’m getting married, I’m splitting up, I’m pregnant, I’m not pregnant. Let me just tell you now, I’m not pregnant, I’m not getting married, but I’m very happy now.”

Jennifer has invited The Irish Examiner to talk about the television movie she has just directed, Five, a series of short films telling stories of women with breast cancer. Like most of us, Aniston has lost friends and family to the disease and having turned 42 this year, is more conscious of entering a risky age bracket for the breast cancer.

“I have one friend who fought it for years and it went into remission and then came back and she passed away this summer, sadly. She was in her late 50s,” she says. “Another girlfriend who was in her mid 30s also passed away this summer after fighting it for three years. She lost.”

There’s relief too about her own most recent mammogram, which reduced her to tears at the process.

“I just had my last mammogram about a month ago and it was quite different to any other mammogram I’d ever had, because I’d just done this project, Five. It was interesting because this time I realised how disconnected I was before. Like with a smear, I’d usually be like “whatever”. But this time I went in and I had my gown on and the technician lifted my boob, like it was my grandmother kneading dough. Then she moves me this way and that way until I was in the best position and then all of a sudden she walks away.

“I felt the tears coming down my face, as if I was connecting to every woman who has done this and waits that 10, 15 minutes, however long it is. I wept for them and then I’m sitting there waiting myself, with no idea what the answer was going to be. Thankfully there was nothing there.”

Since Aniston erupted into people’s living rooms in 1994 in the mega hit TV show Friends, her life has been subjected to a ridiculous degree of public and media scrutiny.

The break-up of her marriage to Brad Pitt still makes the covers of weekly gossip magazines six years later, every man she’s seen with negatively compared to her ex and there’s constant speculation about marriage.

“It’s taken on a whole life of its own and I’ve no connection to it, nor interest in it,” she sighs. “No matter what you say, no matter what you do, someone will always try to put you under the umbrella of this person, as though you have only one experience in your life and that’s it. I just don’t get it. I love my job. I care that I do good work and this same stuff people keep writing about me just distracts from the work.”

Since May, she’s been in a stable relationship with fellow actor Justin Theroux and there are unconfirmed reports that he has moved into her place in Malibu.

“I’ve never felt like I wouldn’t find love in my life. All I’ll say is that right now I’m very happy and I’m going through a very good time in my life.”

Her legendary slimness over the years has been attributed to all sort of strange fads and diets, including rumours of one that was just baby food. How did the topic of body image work its way through this movie?

“I’ve always been very conscious of how my body works and how healthy it is. But I’m also very aware of the issues related to self image and what young women go through. With breast cancer and this movie, it was about trying to understand what a female goes through in terms of physical breakdown and the emotional reality of losing something that is your most feminine aspect. One in every eight women has breast cancer now, compared with one in every eleven in the 1970s.”

Having recently worked with Colin Farrell on the movie Horrible Bosses, just a few years after filming Marley and Me in Ireland, I wonder if she has any plans to return?

“Ireland’s got to be the greenest place I’ve ever seen. We were only there for two days filming Marley and Me, but I swore to myself I’d have to go back. It’s like the garden of Europe. Colin was on to me too during the shoot to make a return trip and I really want to.”

Given how much scrutiny she is subjected to as she attempts a private life, what advice would she give to the girl Jennifer if she knew then what she knows now about the vagaries of life, men and work?

“If I was starting out again and able to advise the younger Jennifer, I’d say take more risks, travel more, have more adventures. I play things a little safe and I sometimes think of just throwing caution to the wind and just disappearing.”