Jennifer Aniston Calls “Bullsh*t” on the Rules of Aging
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The first time I interviewed Jennifer Aniston for Allure was in 2004. Friends was just ending, and as her run as Rachel came to a close, we talked about hair, aging, exercise, and what it was like to be on top in an industry known for tearing people down.
Over the next two decades, I interviewed Aniston several more times, including for the 2022 Allure cover profile where she shared for the first time the painful truth that she'd been undergoing IVF during those years she was under tabloid “bump watch.” In all those conversations, we also discussed, well, hair, aging, exercise, and somehow still being on top of that same industry. When I interviewed Aniston the other day, I decided to mix it up. This time we got to the bad behavior, more than a little politics, and a message she'd like to share with Big Tech.
What’s your typical workout?
Nothing is really typical. I do Pvolve and I love it, I absolutely love it. [Aniston is a spokesperson for the fitness company and is launching a series of workouts inspired by her own training sessions.] I workout minimum four times a week, I would say. If I'm working, sadly, sometimes I can only get in two or three, but as long as I get it in, that's all that matters. Strength training is the most important thing for women in their 50s. If you lose muscle, your bones get brittle—osteoporosis. We fall down, we break a hip, and that's a wrap.
You’re almost 55. What’s your relationship with your body these days?
Well, we really love each other.
Bravo. Me and my body aren’t speaking to each other anymore. It’s a cold war.
We’ve got to love our bodies. It's doing the best it can. It's been with us since the day we started, so we can't be too hard on it.
I was working on a movie and there was an older man on set. I'd seen him on a couple of different jobs and he was just working, working, working. I go, ‘You are impressive. I mean, you just never stop.’ And he said, ‘I just don't let the old man in.’ There was something about that.
Of course, we're all going to grow older, but how can we thrive as we grow older? And that is about giving your body the attention that it deserves. For me personally, I loved my 30s, but my 20s were nothing. I was a nightmare. I didn't understand working out until my 30s and 40s.
Do you sleep well?
Sleep and I have a real hard relationship. I really want to love it and I am sure it wants to love me, but we have had a hard time, especially the last 10, 15 years. It’s just hard to shut the brain down, hard to tell the committee to stop talking. I've had to shut the news off. I’ve had to give myself boundaries with information. You know what I mean?
I think that's happening to half the country right now.
I agree with you so much, Danielle. Our bodies, our brains are not designed to take in this much information. They’re just not. We used to have a television and a radio and that was it. We would turn on the news at six, and that was all you got plus a newspaper in the morning. You could go live a glorious life where your cortisol levels weren't through the roof, where your anxiety wouldn’t be out of control. It's just too much. This is not normal.
We stopped watching the news in my house. Now we watch an episode of The West Wing every night and pretend it’s the evening news.
You are not alone. Ratings for those news shows, CNN, all of them…I think the ratings are going down because everyone's like, ‘Yep, that's a wrap on news for me right now.’
I think a lot of people are thinking they’ll check back in four years.
Someone said that there was a yacht or a huge cruise liner that was offering a four-year trip around the world so [people could] check out and get on a cruise ship for the next four years.
I would do that.
I know.
What’s your approach to your mental health? Can you live by your own mental health philosophy?
All you can do is the best you can. I meditate in the morning. I stretch before bed. I've been really trying to work on my sleep hygiene, and I hate those words. I can't stand “sleep hygiene.” I've been trying hard to put myself in bed during the week at 10pm, turn everything off and then just sit there and let the world come crashing in. I've been trying to meet that challenge for myself. Some days you're great and on point, and some days you're just not. I’m a big believer in trying not to be hard on yourself because the world is so mean right now and so aggressive and negative. So why would we do it to ourselves?
If you can't feel or find peace, you can try to approximate it.
Yes.
With a martini.
That's a beautiful way. A beautiful martini is always a lovely way to relax. You’ve got to live your life. No restrictions—except hard drugs. It’s the 80/20 approach.
Can you talk about the 80/20 approach? What does the 20 look like?
Eighty percent healthy living and then 20 percent is: Go have a martini, go have your pizza and burgers and stay up late with your friends. There's a balance.
Is that what your 20 looks like? Pizza and burgers and martinis and late nights with friends?
Yeah, pretty much. We’re good at enjoying ourselves—me and my friends. We've done it for 30, 35 years.
Any hopes for how you approach aging?
With positivity and gratitude. I mean, we are still here. What's the alternative? I'm trying not to think about growing older. I try not to think about age. The world will always be there telling us what your age is and what women should do in society when you're this or that.
I think we're realizing how people are so impressionable. It's like, ‘Okay, well if they say this happens at this age, that’s what happens at this age.’ But then you go, ‘No! Who’s making these rules?!’ Our muscles are going to go limp as we get older? No, let's keep them strong. We can make our own rules. It’s all bullshit.
A big part of how you age comes from having a community, right?
Yes! And because of screens and computers and phones and iPads and watches, we are losing that community. Those of us lucky enough to be of the generation where we didn't have any of that were able to sit and talk or be bored and figure out how to entertain ourselves and allow our minds to get creative…nobody gets bored these days.
Every time my kids say they're bored, I'm like, ‘thank you—you're making me feel like a wonderful parent.’
Yes! Thank you for being bored. I'm glad you're bored. I think that's what I worry about. This bubble wrap generation and the overly screened-out TikTok generation. Who knows what that's going to produce?
A lot of loneliness.
Yeah, loneliness, anxiety, mental issues, all of it. I mean, we see it and that's why I'm so grateful to…What's his name? Andrew? He wrote The Anxious Generation.
Jonathan Haidt.
I'm so grateful to him and what he's brought forth and made people aware of. I don't know shit about kids. I don't have any, but in my brain, I just remember watching my friends’ seven-year-olds or eight-year-olds on these phones and it's like, how does a nine-year-old have the same access to what a 40-year-old billionaire has in their pocket? It’s too much. The brain should be as developed as it can be without being influenced or poisoned by social media. If you can't drink until you're 21 or you can't drive until you're 16, you can't make good decisions.
Steve Jobs, the internet, big tech—it ruined everything.
It really did. Well, I hope they're happy.
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Originally Appeared on Allure
