A chance meeting at a gas station helped put Jennifer Aniston in Friends
After four television shows sank beneath her, a discouraged Jennifer Aniston spotted NBC's entertainment chief Warren Littlefield at a Los Angeles gas station and asked him for reassurance. He told her to keep going. Months later he helped cast her in a new sitcom, where she ended up playing Rachel Green for a decade.
Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks on February 11, 1969. Both parents acted: her father, John Aniston, was born in Greece, and her mother was Nancy Dow. Telly Savalas was her godfather. Raised partly in New York, she was barred from watching television at home despite her father's TV career, and found ways around the rule. At a Waldorf school she discovered acting at 11, then trained at Manhattan's LaGuardia performing arts high school.
Early work was thin. She paid rent as a telemarketer, waitress and bike messenger, took an uncredited part in the critically mauled Mac and Me (1988), and starred in the horror comedy Leprechaun (1993), a role she has said embarrasses her. Series such as Molloy and a Ferris Bueller spin-off were quickly cancelled.
Friends producers first wanted her to read for Monica, but Courteney Cox got that part. Aniston also declined a slot on Saturday Night Live to stay with the sitcom. It paid off: she won an Emmy for lead actress, a Golden Globe in 2003, and by the final season she and her female co-stars were earning $1 million an episode, which Guinness called a record for television actresses.
On film, Roger Ebert said the independent drama The Good Girl (2002) finally broke her free of Rachel. Her biggest commercial hit came a year later with Bruce Almighty, opposite Jim Carrey, grossing $484 million worldwide. Marley & Me set a Christmas Day box-office record of $14.75 million in 2008. In 2019 she came back to television, producing and starring in Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, which brought a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Source: Jennifer Aniston
