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Ever since she hit superstardom in the mid-1990s with her iconic role as Rachel Green in Friends, Jennifer Aniston has truly captivated us, both on and off-screen. While on-screen, she’s made us laugh, cry, and feel every emotion in between with her versatile repertoire (yes, we’re especially talking about her leading roles in the Netflix drama Dumplin’ and in the 2014 drama Cake!) But her iconic characters are only the tip of the iceberg of why everyone (including us) adore her so much. It’s because she always know the right, raw, and relatable things to say.
Aniston seemingly has an endless well of knowledge. Are you feeling unsure of yourself? Doubting your direction in life? Feeling swayed by the opinions of others? She can basically be your life coach and guide you to personal greatness. She’s always been open about her struggles and how she’s become the confident superstar she is today.
From aging confidently to loving your changing body, the Emmy-winning actress is the figurehead for remaining empowered (and fabulous) at every age.
Don’t believe us? Take a look at some of Aniston’s best quotes on a variety of important life issues below.
A version of this article was originally published on Feb 2017.
On forever growing
“I feel like I’m coming through a period that was challenging and coming back into the light,” she told Allure in 2022. “I have had to do personal work that was long overdue, parts of me that hadn’t healed from the time I was a little kid. I’m a very independent person… I’ve realized you will always be working on stuff. I am a constant work in progress. Thank God. How uninteresting would life be if we all achieved enlightenment and that was it?”
On not giving a d*mn
Aniston doesn’t resent the bad things that have happened to her. In fact, she embraces it because it led her to where she is now. “That’s why I have such gratitude for all those sh*tty things. Otherwise, I would’ve been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were,” she said to Allure. “And now, I don’t f**king care.”
On celebrating our bodies
After her nude photoshoot, she talked to Harper’s Bazaar about how “normal” if felt, and how we should embrace our bodies at all stages. “It felt completely normal. I think our bodies are beautiful, and I think celebrating them and being comfortable in them—no matter what age you are—is important,” she said. “There shouldn’t be any kind of shame or discomfort around it.”
On letting go of anger
In her same interview with Allure, she talked about how she never wants to hold onto anger, and how much of a toll it takes on people. “It’s toxic to have that resentment, that anger. I learned that by watching my mom never let go of it. I remember saying, ‘Thank you for showing me what never to be,’” she said. “So that’s what I mean about taking the darker things that happen in our lives, the not-so-happy moments, and trying to find places to honor them because of what they have given to us.”
On confidence coming from within
When awarded People’s “Most Beautiful Woman” for 2016, she had some (fittingly) beautiful words, saying, “Beauty is inner confidence. Peace. Kindness. Honesty. A life well-lived.”
She added, “Taking on challenges and not feeling shame for things that haven’t gone the way you felt they should have. And not feeling like a failure or allowing people to critique your life and make you feel like you’ve failed at something. That’s just toxic noise.”
On loving her 50s
“I feel the best in who I am today, better than I ever did in my 20s or 30s even, or my mid-40s. We needed to stop saying bad shit to ourselves,” she said in her bombshell Allure interview. “You’re going to be 65 one day and think, I looked fucking great at 53.”
On social media
“I hate social media,” she said to Allure. “I’m not good at it. It’s torture for me. The reason I went on Instagram was to launch this line. Then the pandemic hit and we didn’t launch. So I was just stuck with being on Instagram. It doesn’t come naturally.”
On where her confidence comes from
She told Geo TV, “When we feel supported from within, we feel our best. And our confidence to take on the whole world outside comes from way deeper.”
On choosing happiness always
To Glamour in 2012, Aniston offered this nugget of wisdom: “You can undo a lot of things. If you’re not happy, you can become happy. Happiness is a choice. That’s the thing I really feel.”
On overcoming doubts within yourself
Aniston opened up at the 2016 Giffoni Film Festival about erasing self-doubt: “We’re all human beings at the end of the day, whether we’re a waitress or a baker or a student or whatever we are. At the end of the day, you kind of can hit walls and think, I can’t go any farther. Or, this is too much. My heart can’t take it, or the pain is too great, or am I good enough? Will I survive? And you just have to sort of somehow miraculously overcome. You just go, ‘I can’t, yes I can, yes you can.'”
On refusing to live by others’ definitions
Aniston told Elle magazine this important kernel of truth about rejecting others’ definitions of you: “It’s just confounding how we need people to be defined so starkly, so black and white, so base. Don’t we all have days when we feel lonely and days when we feel completely connected to everything? I’m not one aspect of the human experience — none of us is.”
On the foolishness of the fairy tale myth
Aniston opened up to Vogue in 2008 about the silly pressures of having a “happily ever after”: “Whoever said everything has to be forever, that’s setting your hopes too high. It’s too much pressure. And I think if you put that pressure on yourself — because I did! ‘Fairy tale! It has to be the right one!’ — that’s unattainable.”
When ‘Friends’ gets love more than ‘SATC’
Aniston, who understood the power of a good romantic storyline thanks to her time on Friends, lowkey shaded Sex and the City‘s stance on love: “I never liked Sex and the City, the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find The Man. It is just not up my alley. I don’t believe in it. There is nothing you can control about love.”
On the real culprit of bad beauty standards
Aniston, in the same powerful Huffington Post essay from July 2016, described the insidious tabloid beauty machine in an attempt to tear it down: “The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty. Sometimes cultural standards just need a different perspective so we can see them for what they really are — a collective acceptance… a subconscious agreement. We are in charge of our agreement. Little girls everywhere are absorbing our agreement, passive or otherwise.”
On aging
In 2011, Aniston told Glamour that “being this side of 40 feels like what I should have felt being this side of 25: in my body, in my heart, happy with my life and OK with whatever bumps in the road present themselves.”
On women choosing their destiny
From the Huffington Post essay Aniston penned, titled “For The Record”: “We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone. Let’s make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Let’s make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don’t need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own ‘happily ever after’ for ourselves.”
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