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Magazine
index - Entire
Cast - Cast
members - Jennifer
Aniston - Courteney
Cox
By Mitchel Fink Life can be so unfair sometimes. Had things worked out the way Jennifer Aniston planned, she would have used her summer hiatus from Friends to play a 29-year-old virgin who falls in love with a self-loathing hitman in a movie called 'The Virgin Mary'. Unfortunately, life in Hollywood doesn't always go according to script. And with the script for 'The Virgin Mary' undergoing a series of painful re-writes, Aniston, 30, found herself sitting helplessly on the sidelines watching the clock count down to her impending return to Friends in August, as the window to any outside work opportunity slowly closed. So what's a girl to do? I'm no travel agent, but I would bet there are worse Plan Bs than a reported trip to Europe aboard a private jet, including a visit to the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, and a scenic drive through the Sierra Nevada mountain range - in the company of an actor by the name of Brad Pitt. Though she and Pitt have kept up appearances by maintaining seperate multi-million dollar homes in Los Angeles, it's no secret that the handsome couple are an item--and a very serious one at that. Not that she'll talk about it. "My responsibility to the public is my work," she has said, "not what goes on in my private life. To talk about a relationship trivializes something that's nobody's business." Very little about Aniston's yearlong relationship with Pitt has gone according to plan. At least as far as the media is concerned. We had them married months ago - on several occasions. But as Aniston's publicist, Stephen Huvane, says, "One-one hundredth of a percent of what's been written about Jennifer and Brad has been true." Huvane's advice to those of us who have probably spent too much time wondering where and when they'll take the plunge is simple: "Assume they are a normal couple," he says. "Then apply logic to it." In other words, Aniston and Pitt are in it for the long haul, but keep the tux in the closet. That said, Huvane's advice doesn't neccessarily mean that the media-shy couple didn't stop their SUV long enough at some out-of-the-way chapel in Spain to let the local padre perform the deed. Whether or not wedding bells are ringing, by all accounts Aniston and Pitt have reached a point in their relationship where they can find solace in simply exhaling and hanging out. "Jennifer's a lot more peaceful now, like a woman who's in a good relationship," Aniston's sitcom costar Lisa Kudrow said recently. "There's not a lot to say about them because there are no problems. They're both light years ahead of themselves. You know how your grandparents have a certain perspective about life? They've got that now." That level of relaxation certainly did not come with the turf. They denied they were dating from the start - even in the face of a much-circulated photo of the two nuzzling at last summer's Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. It took months for them to even acknowledge the existence of their relationship to anyone outside of family and a close circle of friends. In November, I watched in amazement at the extraordinary lengths to which these two went in what turned out to be a feeble attempt to convince an ever-prying media that they barely knew each other, much less shared the same bed. It was the night Pitt's movie Meet Joe Black was having its premiere in New York. The two had been holed up all day in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel and were awaiting the arrival of their handlers and the kind of security force normally reserved for visiting heads of state. After much discussion and hand-wringing, it was decided that Pitt would leave first in a limousine that would carry him to the movie's debut at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Once there, he would traverse the red carpet by himself and smile for the paparazzi. If a few wise-guy shutterbugs started yelling out "Where's Jennifer?" Pitt would lay some more of that million-dollar smile on them and just keep right on walking. In the meantime, Aniston would be entrusted to Kevin Huvane, her agent and the brother of her publicist, who would make sure that she got into the Ziegfeld without having to walk the red carpet. If the paparazzi got off a few shots of her, at least the photos would show her by herself, or with one of the Huvanes. But Pitt's control over the 'Meet Joe Black' premiere extended only so far. Aniston went to the midtown Metropolitan Club for the post-premiere party. Pitt had instructed his "people" to keep the press away from that party, but some reporters made it in anyway, and watched eagerly as Aniston was ushered through the club's ornate, cavernous room to a corner table where Pitt was waiting. He greeted her with a long hug and a kiss. OK, so the movie tanked. The important thing is the relationship did not. This cat-and-mouse game isn't easy for Aniston. It's out of character for the Southern California-born, New York-raised actress who, friends say, is a T-shirt-and-jeans kind of person. "I work from 9 to 5 just like everyone else," she has said. For Aniston, stardom was hardly assured - and that's a lesson she clearly hasn't forgotten. The daughter of showbiz parents - her father, John, appeared on Days of Our Lives - who divorced when she was nine, she worked as a waitress, a telemarketer, a messenger, and a receptionist before hitting it big. Her first feature film role - a lead role in the schlock thriller Leprechaun - hardly propelled her to fame and fortune. Neither did better-off- forgotten TV shows like Ferris Bueller and The Edge. Then came not the casting couch, but the casting scale: Her agent told her that more parts would become available to her if she lost weight. She weiged 140 pounds, which was no big deal for her, but incredible as it seems, in Hollywood, a woman weighing 140 pounds is a fat woman. "It's unfortunate that Hollywood puts pressure on women to be thin," Aniston has said, "because it sends the wrong message." It took her a year to lose 30 pounds on a low-fat diet with the help of nutritionist Carrie Latt Wiatt and a daily exercise regimen with fitness guru Kathy Kaehler. You would have thought she'd found the cure to some disease, given the amount of press coverage her weight loss generated. But Aniston's public battle of the bulge, not to mention her previous romances with Counting Crows lead singer Adam Durvitz and actors Charlie Schlatter and Tate Donovan (with whom she had exchanged commitment rings), couldn't have prepared her for the bunker mentality that would result from her union with Pitt. For he came with baggage. Here was someone who had been dodging media even before his high-profile engagement and equally high-profile breakup with Gwyneth Paltrow. I remember first meeting the scruffy Pitt at a Beverly Hills party back when he was dating Juliette Lewis. The poor guy went so out of his way to avoid having to engage with strangers that I thought he might actually fall through the wall against which he was leaning so closely. As comfortably regal as Paltrow is in the spotlight, or anywhere for that matter, Pitt always looks like he wants to crawl under the covers. (Aniston, too, usually prefers to stay home). But now the twosome seems to be coming out of the proverbial closet. By February, all pretense that they were not a couple had vanished when Pitt hosted his girlfriend's 30th birthday party at one of L.A.'s trendy restaurants, Barfly. The two displayed such moxie that they (gasp) even showed up together! Around this time, Aniston allowed a reporter into her house in the Hollywood Hills and didn't bother to remove the photo of Pitt from her coffee table, or another on display in her office. The couple has reportedly been house-hunting together, and rumor now has it that after months of searching for a joint project, they've agreed to costar in a comedy, Waking Up in Reno, about two couples who travel cross-country from Arkansas to Nevada for a monster truck rally. Unlike some of her Friends costars, Aniston has been able to make the leap to the big screen successfully with mid- budget comedies like She's the One, Picture Perfect, and The Object of My Affection. She also recently lent her voice to the animated film The Iron Giant, which opens this month. But she's hardly the type to pull a David Caruso and ditch the television series that brought her her fame. "I have had this extraordinary opportunity to be on a show that allows me access to these films," she has said. "Before Friends, it wouldn't have happened. I would barely have been able to get into a room to meet anybody." As the show enters its sixth season, its stars--now reportedly paid $120,000 per episode--are quite happy to stay put, thank you, and have all agreed to stay with the show as long as everyone else does. And though it suffered a case of backlash a few seasons ago, Friends now shows no signs of slowing down. The writing - which had languished during the Ross-Rachel romantic saga - is as sharp and funny as ever. And last season, the show ranked higher in the top ten than in the previous season. The only nagging problem with Aniston's character, Rachel, sources tell me, is finding her a new relationship. It is a task made all the more difficult because viewers know who she's shacking up with in real life. You want to find her a TV guy under those circumstances? Well, go for it, goes the conventional wisdom. Just make sure the poor sap is blown up by the third commercial. At the end of the day, we all know she is taken. And it shows. After months of denials, it seems she's having trouble keeping the good news to herself. Before leaving for Spain, she stopped in a health food store, where she ran into another well-know actress. "I've never been happier," she admitted. Just let us know when to call the caterers.
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