When Jennifer Aniston walks into the room at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills on a late August morning, she’s a little late, but who cares?
The star of “Friends” is here to talk about her eagerly awaited new movie, “Rock Star,” in which she plays Emily Poule, the loyal and long-suffering girlfriend of Chris Cole, a small-town musician played by Mark Wahlberg. When Cole suddenly hits the big time after his idols, heavy metal rock legends Steel Dragon, ask him to step into the platform boots of their departing lead singer, Aniston’s character suddenly finds herself carried along for the wild ride and thrown in the deep end of a limitless pool of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, circa 1985.
It’s a gritty role and a nice change of pace for the “Friends” star, who says the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle was fairly unfamiliar to her.
“I can’t say I was ever a rock groupie growing up, though I did have one of those bad moments in my life where I think I slept out in front of a hotel with a friend waiting for a band member of Duran Duran,” she admits. “And that was only once and the first and last time.”
Aniston reports that it was “a lot of fun dressing up as a rock chick, even though it wasn’t the greatest decade in terms of fashion. But I was absolutely a big rock fan, and even now, if there’s an ’80s rock weekend on the radio I’ll listen. I didn’t really have a favorite band although I really loved The Go Go’s and Depeche Mode and Aerosmith and Chicago and those sort of older bands. It was whatever sounded good. I don’t pull out the old albums now, but I do listen to Aerosmith all the time — old and new albums.”
A `pretty normal kid’
Although her film career is taking off big-time, Aniston still comes across as very much the girl-next-door, albeit one wearing a very expensive diamond ring from husband Brad Pitt on her wedding finger. She’s open, friendly, very quick to laugh, and with few of the airs and graces that most stars inevitably acquire. And she makes no secret of the fact that she was never a wild teenager.
So did she find it hard to relate to her character’s rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle?
“Yeah, because I never went out all night or snuck out and slept at someone’s house or anything,” she says. “I was a pretty normal kid. So it was a bit hard to relate to all the craziness, because it’s absolutely wild, and I feel that if I missed out on anything, on any of those kinds of really wild times in my life, I feel like now I’ve had a taste of it.”
Indeed, the star’s vicarious “Rock Star” experiences include drug use, a soon-to-be infamous nipple-piercing scene with Wahlberg and orgy scenes with assorted musicians and groupies. Was she nervous about doing the orgy scene?
“Yeah, oh yes,” she admits. “You don’t know how it’s going to look.” Did they shoot more than we see? “No.” She pauses and then adds with a laugh, “Yeah, it’s on the cutting room floor. It’ll all come out on IMAX in a couple of years.”
Although there are a lot of drug references in the film, and her character apparently pops some pills, Aniston says she’s never been tempted to try them.
“I’ve never been around drug use,” she states. “I don’t live in that world, in that kind of idea, whatever it is, of Hollywood glam. I don’t even know if it exists, at least in my circle of friends.”
There have been reports that some of the hard-core drug use in the film was cut.
“Yes, there’s a big bathroom coke sniffing scene that was cut, and you saw all these lines and pills,” says Aniston. “Why did they cut it? Who knows. I think because it was too much.”
Point out that it’s true to the era, and she quickly agrees. “Yes, but that’s also one of the biggest frustrations about making a movie,” she notes. “You do all the tests screenings and people will say, `Oh, it freaked me out to see them do drugs.’ But we’re telling a story here, and this is what it is. It must freak you out when you see someone get stabbed to death, too, but for some reason that’s OK.”
Stand-in nipple
Even the booze and drug use in “Rock Star” pale next to the graphic nipple-piercing scene with Wahlberg. But Aniston is quick to set the record straight on this issue.
“It was a stunt nipple,” she says with a laugh. “It was a stand-in nipple, an insertion nipple. It was actually two different people altogether just for that moment. He lent us his nipple hole, already pre-pierced.”
Were she and Wahlberg laughing during the scene?
“No, we were actually a little mortified,” she admits. “It was in the beginning when we didn’t really know each other yet. We’d just been shooting for two weeks and I was still kind of going back and forth doing `Friends,’ so I wasn’t there all the time. So it was basically two strangers in a room with a needle and some fake whiskey and the ice cubes and the director, and we were all sitting there trying to be comfortable, and it was almost impossible.”
Despite such scenes, Aniston says that making “Rock Star” definitely inspired her.
“I’d like to try singing and I’d love to become musically inclined a little bit,” she sums up. “I’m going to try and start taking guitar lessons. I’ve desperately always wanted to do that.”
