Jennifer Aniston would like you to know that we can stop fretting over her. She appreciates all the concern we’ve heaped on her in the years since Friends, through the Brad Pitt era, across all those tabloids.
She’s good now. She’s rich. And she has a great boyfriend in Justin Theroux.
“Not only is he a great actor,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar, “but he’s one of the best comedy writers out there. And he directs and paints murals. And I just think it’s so attractive to be that good at so many things and to have no ego. He’s one of the most humble, decent human beings. He’s not an ass. He’s not like some of our friends who are young and up-and-coming and they hit celebrity, and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh! You’re different. Now you don’t say hi to people?’ “.
Over the years of all that checkout aisle attention and rumor milling, Aniston had to develop some tough skin. But she also learned to just let it all go.
“It’s the detachment from it,” says the avowed transcendental meditator. “There was a part of me that used to get very upset. I was guilty of getting too up in arms about stuff that wasn’t real, phantom boxing with something that’s not even there. Now I’d rather just focus on people and things that are here, happening, and what’s yet to come. My friends, my family, wonderful people I work with. We know what the real is.”
Even those tongue-wags get a pass from Aniston now.
“I think it’s extremely important to forgive,” she insists. “Otherwise it just builds up like toxic waste. There’s nothing worse than holding a grudge. Listen, people can do unforgivable things, but you have to let it go and say, ‘Look, we’re all human beings. We make mistakes.’ To hold any kind of resentment is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.”
Her perspective on her life, being real, loving people who aren’t full of themselves, and being positive about her age give Aniston a philosophy that keeps her happy.
“There are moments when you have to stop and pinch yourself and go, ‘I’m here. I did something good.'”