Jennifer Aniston talked about her personal life and explained that it has been greatly affected by her parents' divorce.
The actress spoke to WSJ magazine and said that seeing her parents' difficult relationship when she was a child, she never looked forward to having her own family.
"It was always a little bit difficult for me in relationships, I think, because I really was kind of alone," Aniston told WSJ. Magazine in an interview published Aug. 22.
"I don't know. My parents, watching my family's relationship, didn't make me kind of go, 'Oh, I can't wait to do that.' I didn't like the idea of sacrificing who you were or what you needed, so I didn't really know how to do that.
"So it was almost easier to just be kind of solo. So I didn't have any real training in that give-and-take."
"It's just about not being afraid to say what you need and what you want," she continued in the interview, which was conducted in May before the SAG-AFTRA strike. "And it's still a challenge for me in a relationship. I'm really good at every other job I have, and that's sort of the one area that's a little…."
Jennifer Aniston seems on top of the world with her successful TV show, The Morning Show, that she not only stars in, but also produces with Reese Witherspoon. But being the woman in charge behind the camera in Hollywood isn’t always the easiest road to navigate.
She learned that lesson the hard way when she was in business with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt.
When the dynamic duo was married in the early 2000s, Aniston and Pitt formed Plan B Entertainment with her friend Kristen Hahn and producer Brad Grey. The production company went on to become a major entertainment industry player, but the women weren’t exactly treated as equals on the job.
Aniston shared with The Wall Street Journal what it was like experiencing the unfair “gender dynamics” when they were developing the Martin Scorsese film, The Departed.
“Talk about a male-female situation,” she explained how she and Hahn were treated. “It was a male-dominated sort of environment, and it was like, ‘Oh, aren’t you two cute?’”
After the couple divorced, Pitt stuck with Plan B Entertainment while Aniston stepped away from doing business with her ex — and the movie won an Oscar for Best Picture. Surprisingly, the Friends star isn’t bitter about not getting the credit she deserved.
“It was like, ‘Go with God and be successful and fantastic,’ which they have been,” she said reflectively. “It was the only decision. And not in a negative way. It just was what was right at the time.”
Now that she has her own media company, Echo Films, she and Witherspoon run a tight ship with the mantra, “No a**holes.” She noted, “It was one of our big rules up front.” Aniston may not have been able to share in the success of Plan B Entertainment, but it taught her valuable life lessons in leadership and how everyone should be treated on and off-camera.
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