Jennifer Aniston has made a rare comment about her divorce from Brad Pitt.
Their split is easily one of Hollywood’s most high-profile of all time with some fans essentially left in mourning of their relationship.
The Hollywood sweethearts started dating in the late 90s before a beachside wedding in July 2000. But they announced their decision to separate in January 2005, with their divorce finalised in the October.
And soon sprung the the Team Aniston vs Team Jolie T-shirts as Pitt began spending more and more time with his Mr & Mrs Smith co-star Angelina Jolie. He maintained that he did not cheat on his wife, with Aniston saying at the time that she believed him.
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Now, nearly 20 years on since that The Unsinkable Jennifer Aniston interview, the Friends star has reflected on it.
“I haven’t looked at that interview in forever,” she said in her new Vanity Fair piece.
“I just remember the experience of doing it - which was kind of jarring. It was also such a vulnerable time. But yeah, that was one for the memoirs.”
During that 2005 interview, the first she did after they split, Aniston said she really did believe her and Pitt’s marriage was ‘the real thing’, putting what went wrong as ‘complicated’.
“I think - it changed,” the actor said at the time. “We both changed. You do the best you can, and I think we did. We did the best we could.”
And now, she says that her way of getting through it at the time was by telling herself: “Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep on walking, girl.”
But while Aniston was trying to do that, the media was having a field day with so much frenzy and rumours surrounding their split.
“It was such juicy reading for people. If they didn’t have their soap operas, they had their tabloids,” the Horrible Bosses actor said.
“It’s a shame that it had to happen, but it happened. And boy did I take it personally.”
Aniston continued: “We’re human beings, even though some people don’t want to believe we are.
“They think, 'You signed up for it, so you take it.' But we really didn’t sign up for that.”
Following her break-up from Pitt, Aniston (somewhat ironically), ended up starring in the 2006 film The Break-Up with Vince Vaughn.
“It was kind of cathartic to go right from that [the separation],” she said. “So when they came to me ... they were a little nervous about making the offer, 'cause they thought, 'Oh, is that insensitive? Is it inappropriate?' But I actually thought, 'What a great opportunity.'”
The star said she knew it would benefit her ‘emotionally’ as well as serving the script and character ‘pretty well’. Aniston previously said Vaughn was her ‘defibrillator’ as he ‘brought her back to life’ at the time.
Topics: Brad Pitt, Celebrity News, Jennifer Aniston, Sex and Relationships, Celebrity
Jess Battison