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"  It&amp;#039;s a strange feeling when one of your closest friends is someone nearly everyone in the world feels they know too. It&amp;#039;s even stranger when you pass a newsstand and see your friend on the covers of tabloids\u2014nearly every week\u2014and you are amazed at the Cirque du Soleil imaginings and contortions of these media storytellers. And then there&amp;#039;s the recurrent experience involving the rest of the people in your life\u2014family, colleagues, etc.\u2014who have passionate advice, opinions, or fondness for your friend based on what they have read in line at the grocery store, which they feel compelled to convey to you, a friend of the Friend.  I met Jennifer Aniston 20 years ago when we both still had chipmunk cheeks and shaggy Valerie Bertinelli hair. This was back when we lived next door to each other in Laurel Canyon and Jen would sit on my couch and worry that she&amp;#039;d never work as an actor; when we would dine, almost daily, at an all-you-can-eat buffet in the mall; when Jen&amp;#039;s furniture consisted of cardboard boxes and a makeshift scarf lampshade; when she would build her own closet\u2014yes, with tools (okay, and a handy boyfriend)\u2014lay her own tile, and have &amp;quot;painting parties&amp;quot; to entice friends to help cover her walls in exchange for pizza, beer, and a guaranteed good time. Anyone who knew Jen in those days knew that this girl, who has always altered the chemical makeup of any room she enters, was destined to do whatever she dreamed of. She exuded that ineffable, uncontrived quality that just made you want to be in her presence, and she was one of those rare creatures who at 20\u2014and still at 40\u2014hadn&amp;#039;t realized how alluring she is. That&amp;#039;s what makes her and her work so accessible to this day; she has yet to process the Hollywood memo designating her as one of the beautiful people, one of the chosen. Jen and I have been neighbors, roommates, confidants, co- collaborators, and business partners. About seven years ago, we started a film production company called Bloc Productions that became Plan B Entertainment with her then-husband, Brad Pitt; now, we have a new company called Echo Films and a mandate to develop movies with strong female characters (strong male ones, too) in hopes of telling stories that take a few more risks than your average multiplex fare. Wish us luck, because at this moment in Hollywood, that&amp;#039;s like saying you&amp;#039;re going to use some handy-dandy magnet device to reverse the rotation of the planets, even if one of your magnets is a giant movie star like Jennifer Aniston. We have, actually, managed to finish shooting our first Echo film (in conjunction with Bona Fide Productions), called The Baster, in which Jen stars opposite Jason Bateman. In the movie, Jen&amp;#039;s character wants to have a baby on her own (gasp!), not because she hasn&amp;#039;t found The One, but because she&amp;#039;s just ready. It&amp;#039;s a subtle difference, but not so easy to pull off in a mainstream movie, especially when your script tosses around the verboten word sperm. Through the years, I&amp;#039;ve felt\u2014as have our other close friends\u2014that while various magazine profiles have captured aspects of who Jen is, they can&amp;#039;t help but be what they are: a stranger&amp;#039;s point of view. The essence of Jen is, as for any of us, found in the details embedded in the context of time\u2014and I don&amp;#039;t mean the details of her picked-over love life. I mean the details of what a person is like at their most relaxed, when there&amp;#039;s no unfamiliar face in the room, when silence is completely comfortable, when there&amp;#039;s no one to impress or convince and nothing to defend. This is the version of Jen I&amp;#039;ve been lucky to know for two decades. So when ELLE proposed a friend-on-Friend interview, I was intrigued\u2014and, yes, now that it&amp;#039;s upon me, a little daunted\u2014by the challenge of rendering an intimate portrait of one of the most globally recognized people in 4,000 words.  For the purpose of this article, I flew with Jen to New York City, where she was headed to start her next film, The Bounty, costarring Gerard Butler, on the private plane chartered by Sony Pictures. When Jen boards, she&amp;#039;s enveloped in hugs from people she&amp;#039;s worked with before\u2014some for years, starting with Friends through her 20-some movies (such as Chris McMillan, her hairdresser and &amp;quot;brother from another mother,&amp;quot; the architect of &amp;quot;The Rachel&amp;quot; and beyond). I sidle up to Jen&amp;#039;s makeup artist, Angela Levin, who&amp;#039;s watching the receiving line. &amp;quot;Whenever I think of Jen,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;I think of someone who&amp;#039;s surrounded by people who love her and whom she loves.&amp;quot; I think of the irony of all those magazine covers that borrow Jen&amp;#039;s face to tell a soap opera about a lonely girl who just can&amp;#039;t catch a break. What those of us who&amp;#039;ve been close to her for so long know is that she can&amp;#039;t catch a break from the media&amp;#039;s perception of who she is and the projection of what our culture seems to need her to be.  Onboard, I eventually take a seat next to Jen to ask her thoughts on the heavily inked topic of &amp;quot;the lonely girl.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, that archetype has definitely attached itself to me, and you know what? It&amp;#039;s fine; I can take it,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I support women, men, anybody who is in a place that&amp;#039;s not their strongest and who is ready to push forward. So if I&amp;#039;m the emblem for this is what it looks like to be the lonely girl getting on with her life, so be it. I can make fun of myself, and I&amp;#039;ll bring it up as long as the world is bringing it up. I&amp;#039;m not going to ignore the pink elephant in the room.&amp;quot; She takes a minute to check the equilibrium of the plane as it takes off at a steep angle. She scans the flight attendant&amp;#039;s face for concern. Satisfied, she continues: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just confounding how we need people to be defined so starkly, so black and white, so base. Don&amp;#039;t we all have days when we feel lonely and days when we feel completely connected to everything? I&amp;#039;m not one aspect of the human experience\u2014none of us is.&amp;quot; I comment on the fact that at this point in her life, Jen is so self-sufficient and accomplished, I wonder if that&amp;#039;s intimidating to men. It would take a man with a strong sense of self to become a partner in such a fully furnished life. Jen and I acknowledge that men, especially, have a primal urge to feel needed and to provide. But ultimately, I say, I think it&amp;#039;s up to the man to find his place in the big life she has created, not up to Jen to play small or act less independent.  When we arrive at the midtown hotel that Jen will call home for the next two and a half months, I settle into my room and then head to her suite. A room service attendant is wheeling in eight covered plates of grilled salmon, steamed broccoli, and saut\u00E9ed mushrooms that Jen has ordered, anticipating an impromptu kickoff picnic for some of the people she&amp;#039;s close to on the film. Jen aims a sunny &amp;quot;hello&amp;quot; at the man in the black vest, addressing him by name. &amp;quot;Rocky&amp;quot; is utterly shocked that this screen goddess remembers him, no less his name. &amp;quot;I met you when I first came to this hotel to do Picture Perfect when I was 27,&amp;quot; Jen says. Rocky turns a few shades of crimson as he tries to stay focused on the plates. Once people have converged in Jen&amp;#039;s room, settling into a circle on the floor with plates balanced on their knees, I announce my assignment. There is palpable excitement at the idea\u2014the possibility\u2014that the world will get to see this Jen, the woman who not only remembers Rocky but makes him feel as though he&amp;#039;s stepped into the high school reunion of his dreams. The woman who effortlessly shuttles between the sublime and the silly, as she&amp;#039;s doing now, juggling simultaneous conversations about a Hasidic healer, Marion Cotillard&amp;#039;s performance in La Vie en Rose (one of our all-time favorites), and a name we&amp;#039;ve just hit upon (The Crowded Plate) for the Mexican restaurant Jen has long dreamed of opening. Jen clinks her glass and begins a toast, thanking everyone for doing this movie with her. &amp;quot;I love you guys, and I appreciate you being here with me\u2014and this is gonna be a fun one,&amp;quot; she says.  After dinner, she goes to the balcony to enjoy the nightly cigarette she allows herself while taking in the skyline of her favorite city on earth\u2014the one in which she grew up with her mother, actress Nancy Dow, and older half brother, Johnny, until she moved to Los Angeles at the age of 20. The buildings in New York are like chargers for Jen&amp;#039;s Energizer memory. Driving around the city with her is like being on a Girls Guide to New York tour bus, only all the information is personal. We&amp;#039;ll pass a random street corner and she&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;quot;Oh, that&amp;#039;s where Drea and I used to sneak in and dance all night on box tables,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s where I met Mikhail Baryshnikov, who gave me a ride home when I couldn&amp;#039;t find a cab.&amp;quot;  While she&amp;#039;s staring at the twinkling city, I get down to business as the Interviewer.  Me:  Tell me about your process of creating a character.  Jen:  I&amp;#039;ll never forget my high school acting teacher, Anthony Abeson, who said, &amp;quot;It starts with the shoes.&amp;quot; When I think about a character, it does start with the shoes: What kind would she wear? How would she walk in them? If I&amp;#039;m going to put on a dress for a role\u2014I don&amp;#039;t care if it&amp;#039;s the hardest dress to put on\u2014I have to put the shoes on first. The physicality leads me to the character.... Like Justine in The Good Girl: She was so disconnected from how she looked, that&amp;#039;s what led to the discomfort of who she was.   My character in The Bounty is fun because the shit comes together easily for her. Nic [Nicole] is a quick study. She&amp;#039;s the girl who gets the great push-up bra from Victoria&amp;#039;s Secret, who reads an article about how to have the best orgasm\u2014logs it. She definitely reads Ask E. Jean. [I see Jen&amp;#039;s mind flicker as she switches gears.] I love E. Jean! I found her column when I was a teenager and read it religiously. I didn&amp;#039;t always heed her advice, mind you, but... [She laughs as she stubs out her cigarette.] Me:  So far, you&amp;#039;ve stood in the shoes of nearly 50 characters. Which one is your career highlight? Jen:  Marley &amp;amp;amp; Me and the role of Jennifer, because it spanned the life of a woman starting at twentysomething through marriage and the journey into midlife. It covered the fun and excitement and then the disappointment\u2014the &amp;quot;no one told me how hard this was going to be&amp;quot; part\u2014and then surviving that and being the better for it in this relationship with history to it. The theme of that movie\u2014bellying up against a brick wall and not knowing how to move through it\u2014is a universal dilemma. People who avoid the brick walls\u2014all power to ya, but we all have to hit them sometimes in order to push through to the next level, to evolve.   Jen and I go inside, pour ourselves a glass of wine, and curl up on the couch. &amp;quot;So, I have a question,&amp;quot; I say kind of formally, because, after all, I have made a list, which, to Jen&amp;#039;s credit, she hasn&amp;#039;t once tried to peek at. &amp;quot;Ask me anything!&amp;quot; she says with genuine enthusiasm.  Me: What have been your personal brick walls?  Jen:  Well, there&amp;#039;s the obvious one, which of course was quite public. But my bigger brick walls are from my childhood. My dad walking out and not seeing him for a year and not knowing where he was...trying to understand, Where did that person go? But they all seem so minimal now when I look around and I haven&amp;#039;t lost a child, a parent, been through anything truly tragic. The gift of my childhood\u2014the by-product of those struggles\u2014was laughter, being able to find the humor. I wouldn&amp;#039;t trade any of it, because there&amp;#039;s so much growth and empathy forced out of those experiences.  Me:  Do you have a personal theme that you&amp;#039;re working through in your choices of material? Jen:  My mind instantly goes to Room 10 [a short film she codirected with Andrea Buchanan]. [That movie] nailed my personal theme: love and choosing to stay in the room when the going gets tough. And look, in my life, the reality is, I&amp;#039;ve been the one running out of the room as much as I&amp;#039;ve been portrayed as the one left in the room. I&amp;#039;m also not suggesting that longevity is always the best measure of success, because I&amp;#039;ve had relationships\u2014friendships and romances\u2014of every imaginable length that have been fulfilling. But I think we can all get stuck in how we&amp;#039;re viewed by the outside world\u2014not just public figures. Most of us fall in love with someone&amp;#039;s persona and spend the next three to five years discovering who that person really is. If you can stay connected through that process of raw vulnerability, I think you have a shot at the prize of knowing and accepting another human being for who and what they really are after years of highs and lows. I&amp;#039;ve been a real student of this theme for the last 20 years. Me:  You&amp;#039;ve done serious justice to the romantic comedy genre. What&amp;#039;s the new frontier for you as an actor? Jen: I want to tell the love story through father-daughter and mother-daughter stories. I think those are at the root of all other stories. Sometimes they&amp;#039;re embedded in other layers of a story\u2014like in Tootsie, or Terms of Endearment, which is also a love story. Me:  What actresses from your childhood inspired you? Jen:  Well, I wasn&amp;#039;t allowed to watch TV as a child. [A fact I&amp;#039;d completely forgotten; we laugh at the irony of Jen becoming one of the biggest TV stars of a generation.7] So I had to sneak it, and the women who caught my attention were Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams [Laverne &amp;amp;amp; Shirley], Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore, Cher, Valerie Harper. I wasn&amp;#039;t sophisticated enough to know I could go to movies. We couldn&amp;#039;t afford it. But I finally saw A Little Romance. I was so in love with Laurence Olivier. I watched that movie over and over and just fell in love with love. At this point, we hear a faint knock on the door as &amp;quot;the Twins&amp;quot;\u2014Nina and Clare Hallworth (Jen&amp;#039;s stylists/costume designers)\u2014and Leigh Kilton-Smith (her acting coach and our mutual friend of 20 years) come busting in as if it was the worst idea we ever had to be separated like that. Leigh is holding a pair of pink lace underwear, which I realize are mine; I lent them to her months ago, during The Baster, when we were shooting nights and sleeping during the day and felt like Vampires Gone Wild. For some faux sympathy, Leigh shows off a bruise I apparently gave her. Jen sees it and yells, &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t pinch her, Kristin, she&amp;#039;s on Lipitor!&amp;quot; Somehow that devolves into Leigh enlightening us with a little hotel trivia:  &amp;quot;The people who work at these hotels,&amp;quot; she says conspiratorially, &amp;quot;know exactly who orders porn in their room, FYI.&amp;quot;  Jen protests: &amp;quot;I never rent porn in my room!&amp;quot;  Leigh struts over to the bar. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s just chill, people,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I was just telling you in the event that the idea might occur to you.&amp;quot; CHECK OUT THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF ELLE FOR THE FULL STORY ON JENNIFER ANISTON "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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