Jennifer Aniston has opened up about her childhood with a shocking admission that she “felt unsafe” in her household.
Speaking with Sandra Bullock in an interview published by Interview Magazine in celebration of her 51st birthday on Tuesday, the "Friends" star recalled how certain aspects of her childhood shaped her into a strong woman able to stay afloat despite obstacles.
"I think that it comes from growing up in a household that was destabilized and felt unsafe, watching adults being unkind to each other, and witnessing certain things about human behavior that made me think: 'I don’t want to do that' I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to experience this feeling I’m having in my body right now,'" she told Bullock. "I don’t want anyone else that I ever come in contact with ever to feel that.'"
Aniston said she had her parents, Nancy Dow and John Aniston, to thank for learning invaluable life lessons.
"You can either be angry or be a martyr, or you can say, 'You’ve got lemons? Let’s make lemonade,'" she said.
This is not the first time Aniston has spoken about her parents, who split when she was nine years old. Aniston previously recalled coming home from a birthday party one day to find her father had moved out. The hurt she felt would later fuel her in the emotionally charged comedy, "The Break Up."
"I sort of honestly felt like, what a great way to sort of exorcise some of that," she said of her performance in the film, according to Daily Mail.
Aniston has also previously divulged details about her strained relationship with her mother.
"She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like," she said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, according to People.
"I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for and it was something that really resonated with me, this little girl just wanting to be seen and wanting to be loved by a mom who was too occupied with things that didn’t quite matter."
In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Aniston further explained that her mother was "very critical" of her.
"Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn’t. I never was," she said. "I honestly still don’t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine. She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty."
At one point the two did not speak for years but they did eventually manage to put their differences aside and reconnected after Aniston's very public split with Brad Pitt in 2005.
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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