On it, Aniston channels Alex Levy, a morning news anchor making the boldest leaps and power grabs of her career in her 50s. This woman is so famous that her personal life makes headlines and her private heartbreak is plastered across multiple mediums for strangers’ entertainment.
After one public humiliation too many in The Morning Show’s second season, Levy says, “I didn’t realize…that the thing people would find most entertaining is not even the thing that…I have risen to the highest levels of. I didn’t realize that the most entertaining thing about me would be just batting me around like a freaking piñata while digging around asking questions about my sex life.”
Levy and Aniston alike have emerged from the era of Hollywood when there could be only one female star in the room: The Morning Show depicts how Levy embraces her younger coanchor; Witherspoon and Aniston are, as stars, coequals. Diane Sawyer, who inspired Aniston’s performance, loves that the women have shared center stage, onscreen and off. “An alliance of women who have great energy and resilience is a wonderful thing,” Sawyer tells me.
In 2004, Sawyer was the TV host asking Aniston hard-hitting questions about some of the most vulnerable areas of her life. About how her soap opera actor father, John, left her mother, Nancy, an actor and model, so suddenly that her mom broke the news to Aniston when she got home from a birthday party. “It was pretty quick,” Aniston laughs to Sawyer on ABC’s Primetime Thursday broadcast, making light of the heartbreak. About her mother’s criticisms of Aniston as a child—that her nose was too big and her eyes too close together. Aniston explains from her perspective: “helpful beauty tips.” About how many kids she and her then husband, Brad Pitt, wanted to have. “We’d definitely love to have two, at least,” Aniston answers.
While Levy has developed a self-protective steeliness after her decades in the public eye, Aniston hasn’t—not even after nearly four decades, two divorces, approximately two thousand tabloid covers, and years of overly personal questions from strangers.
“I think her superpower is that she could very easily be hard, but she’s incredibly open,” says Sandra Bullock, a close friend. “People want to know about her and understand where she is in life and want her to be happy.”
Fame was never Aniston’s goal—and it still knocks her sideways sometimes. (She views paparazzi when she’s working as “almost an embarrassment, to be honest.”) Growing up, she recalls, people looked to actors like Shirley MacLaine and Mary Tyler Moore not because they were gorgeous and on magazine covers, but because they had made movies and television that moved them. Aniston’s celebrity, as gravity-pulling as it can be, has never defined her: “I’ve always been more into metaphysical things and ‘What if there’s something bigger out there than all of us?’ ” She’s learned not to put everything at the altar of fame. “It’s not real,” she tells me. “My interests are other than that.” During her 20s, she began joining women’s circles with her female friends. She says, “That opened me up to the importance of women in each other’s lives and how important it is to support and hold each other up when so many want to tear each other down.”
About 15 years ago, Aniston and Bullock were attending a mutual friend’s wedding when they locked eyes across the aisle. (Bullock doesn’t know why they were sitting on separate sides, given they were both friends of the groom, but it is her memory and a better visual.) They spent the night trading shots and notes. “We were just like, ‘Oh my God, we need to meet and cut loose,’ ” says Bullock. “And we did.” The hangover, Bullock notes, was epic. Aniston recalls, “I don’t know what I was sending her, but it was definitely stronger than what she was sending me.”
Their rapport was so easy that they wondered why they hadn’t spent time together before. They both love interior design, dated the actor Tate Donovan, and appreciate a practical joke: Bullock later crashed a junket interview to surprise her with tequila and limes. They shared something else too: “We were from that time in the business where no one wanted the ladies to be friends—it was about pitting everyone against each other,” Bullock says. “We were told we weren’t supposed to do that—meaning like and respect and honor each other.”
Aniston has brought Bullock into her inner circle—inviting her to holiday get-togethers, on spring break trips, to numerology readings. “You write down your birth date and, whether you believe in it or not, we’re all scribbling down our thoughts and in it together,” says Bullock. “Nothing is for her alone ever. Everything she does is for everyone else included.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.vanityfair.com ’
