For a long time, people wondered why Jennifer Aniston never had children of her own … and now, she’s opening up about that difficult time in her life and the media’s response to it. In a new interview, the Friends star revealed that she went through a 20-year fertility struggle that the world knew nothing about, and at the same time, she had to cope with speculation about why she wasn’t already a mother.
While talking to Harper’s Bazaar UK, the 56-year-old actress acknowledged that nobody knew what was going on with her behind the scenes during that time.
“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” she said. “That’s not anybody’s business.”
But even so, that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard for her to see the speculation.
“But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it — the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic,” she said. “It does affect me — I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings. That’s why I thought, ‘What the hell?’”
When she would see those stories, it wasn’t just her own feelings she was worried about — she was also worried about how those going through fertility struggles of their own would feel when reading them.
“I knew a lot of women at the time who were trying to have kids, who were dealing with IVF. So it did feel like it was not only for myself, but for any women who were struggling with the same issue,” she added.
Jennifer opened up her frustration for the first time in 2016, when she penned an op-ed for Huffington Post about the same types of tabloid stories she’s talking about in her new interview.
“The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to simply uncover whether or not I am pregnant (for the bajillionth time. .. but who’s counting) points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they’re not married with children,” she wrote at the time.
It wasn’t until 2022 that she revealed that she had tried to have children in the past, including during her marriage to Brad Pitt.
“All the years and years and years of speculation … It was really hard,” she told Allure. “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”
