From the outside, it certainly looks like Jennifer Aniston has it all. One of the world’s most famous TV show actresses is gorgeous, famous, and rich. But while she is certainly a shining example of all those qualities, her story hasn’t always been sunshine and roses. When you look deeper, Aniston’s past is quite tragic, and you’ll learn that the star is no stranger to failure. Still, she was resilient and kept going, even after starring in four failed television shows before making it big on “Friends.” Today, Aniston has flourished in show business for around 40 years and is still going strong, but what about the moments of sorrow in her life that nobody talks about?
Her underwater fear stems from a childhood accident
Aniston can never remain underwater because she drove a tricycle into a swimming pool as a five-year-old child and never let go. Sinking to the bottom, one of her brothers saved her life and pulled her out, but the trauma remains with her as an adult. Her toughest role to date was the 2014 movie “Cake,” which required her to undergo water therapy.
As a child, she felt unsafe
As great as her life as an adult is, her childhood was filled with problems between her actor parents. She described her childhood as “destabilized” and often saw her parents being unkind to each other in their rollercoaster of a relationship. After that, she vowed to break the pattern and not repeat the behavior in her own life.
Her parents’ traumatic divorce impacted her love life
When she was only nine, Aniston returned from a friend’s birthday and discovered that her father had left them. Her mother told her immediately, rather than sitting her down and bracing her for the conversation. The sudden exit of her dad was traumatizing for Aniston, who also had to live with the fact that he was already in a new relationship.
Her mother always judged her
Aniston’s mother, Nancy Dow, set high expectations of her daughter and always focused on her appearance. She also happened to have a temper and would tend to hold grudges over the most minor things. From her mother, Jen learned what not to do.
Her mom wrote a tell-all book that made them estranged
The dynamic between Down and Aniston turned into a rift in 1999 when her mother wrote “From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir” to make her daughter’s fame her own. Aniston felt blindsided and betrayed, and the two never quite got over the trust issues. They didn’t talk for a decade, and Dow wasn’t invited to her 2004 wedding to Brad Pitt.
Jennifer Aniston has dyslexia
School never came easily to Jen. But while she always assumed she was unintelligent, she realized as an adult that she was dyslexic. She found this out when she went to get a prescription for glasses, and during a reading test, the disorder was discovered.
Her marriages all ended in divorce
A few years after marrying Brad Pitt, they decided to separate and ultimately divorce. 10 years later, Aniston walked down the aisle with Justin Theroux. This marriage was even shorter than the first. There’s no bad blood between the actress and her exes; she doesn’t see them as failures. Instead, she sees the end of the relationship as a choice to be happy.
The ship has sailed to become a mom
Many wonder if Jennifer Aniston consciously decided to have kids. Although she and Theroux attempted to have kids with the help of IVF, natural remedies, and more, it didn’t work out, and in her words, “the ship has sailed,” and she has no regrets.
She’s always been a sleepwalking insomniac
Although it didn’t affect her as much in her 30s, as she got older, Jen began to notice that her sleeplessness at night was causing issues throughout the day. Her attempts to fix it caused even more insomnia, and when she did sleep, she would occasionally sleepwalk and set off her house alarm.
She had a dangerous stalker
With fame comes obsession from fans. In 2010, she got a restraining order against Jason Peyton, who was stalking her outside a place she used to frequent. He had a sharp item, a roll of duct tape, and various letters that he wrote to the celebrity. On his vehicle, he even scratched, “I LOVE JENNIFER ANISTON.”
Paparazzi harass her constantly
One of the reasons her marriages didn’t work out was because the paps were always hounding her. They didn’t care if they endangered her or pedestrians, and in 2005, she launched a lawsuit against one who took pictures of her tanning topless on her own property. After the case was settled, Aniston was paid $550,000.
She’s media-shamed with sexist tabloid headlines
The tabloids aren’t afraid to lie about Aniston and make outrageously misogynistic comments. Topics like her nipples, marital status, divorce status, and lack of having a partner have been dissected in the media, which often saw her as a “sad, childless human,” as she told Marie Claire.
Her father’s death was excruciatingly painful
After her dad, soap opera actor John Aniston, passed away, the actress went through an extremely tough time. Despite the relationship being rocky when she was younger, he resumed a fatherly relationship and came back a year after he left. Still, the two have had their ups and downs, but during COVID-19, Aniston had an epiphany and decided to reconcile with him. When he was 89 years old in 2022, he passed away.
