Though she’s furious that a photographer surreptitiously shot topless pictures of her at her home, Jennifer Aniston is philosophic about it.
“I might as well pull my pants down at this point. They’ve seen everything else,” she jokes with Shirley MacLaine, her co-star in the romantic comedy, “Rumor Has It,” which opens Friday.
The paparazzi have targeted Aniston ever since she was one of the sexy six on the enormously popular sitcom, “Friends.”
First it was her hairstyle. Then it was her dating patterns. Then her marriage and, finally, her divorce. “It’s horrendous,” Aniston says during a recent press event in Pasadena, Calif.
“There was an article in the [Los Angeles] Times a couple of weeks ago, they are basically hiring retired gangsters, and they just need to shoot a picture,” she says. “They don’t have to have any photography school. They just have to know how to be aggressive and scare the [bleep] out of people and get the picture.”
Much of the public sides with Aniston against the paparazzi. “On an energetic level, I feel it’s wonderful. It was very comforting,” she says of the support. “I was actually surprised to see that kind of a reaction, but I really did kind of tune out all of that, to reading things and hearing things.”
In “Rumor,” Aniston plays the supposed granddaughter of the “real” Mrs. Robinson who was depicted in film “The Graduate.” MacLaine plays the notorious Mrs. Robinson and Kevin Costner the once-nebbish graduate who was seduced by her years earlier. Briefly, Aniston’s character falls for him–the same guy who had both her mother and grandmother in hot pursuit.
Older men are not for her, Aniston says.
“That never pans out, because I think eventually you grow up,” she says. “When I was like 21, I dated an older man, about 18 years older. It was stupid. It was. It was fun for a minute, then like, ‘Can I get you some tea or a crutch?’ “
Aniston was shooting “Rumor” during all the publicity about the end of her 4 1/2-year marriage to actor Brad Pitt.
“She was going through the worst of all of this during the making of the film, and most people didn’t know that,” says Rob Reiner, the film’s director. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never seen anybody with such grace under fire as Jennifer was. I have such respect for her.”
Though she’s been performing since she was 11, Aniston says she thinks she earned her emotional stamina from her family.
“I learned by example of what not to do by watching my parents,” she shrugs. “I watched my mother be very bitter and very angry throughout a divorce and never let it go and waste the whole second half of her life. So, I thank her for that unconscious sacrifice of what not to do. I think accountability, taking responsibility, because it’s so easy to blame, to point to, be victimized. That’s just a waste of time.”
