Jennifer Aniston reveals IVF struggles for the first time

The star reveals drinking all kinds of 'Chinese teas' and shares the piece of advice she wishes someone - anyone - gave her. 

The star reveals drinking all kinds of 'Chinese teas' and shares the piece of advice she wishes someone - anyone - gave her. 

After years of “protecting” her story about IVF, Jennifer Aniston speaks for the first time about her attempts to get pregnant.

The 53-year-old Friends star reflected on going through “really hard shit” in her 30s and 40s, when she was “trying to get pregnant” while under media scrutiny, on a new interview in Allure.

“It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston says. “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 favour.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”

“It was really hard,” the actor says of the media speculation that shrouded her pregnancy attempts. She notes that the media is particularly callous towards women in entertainment who don’t have children and that it was painful to see tabloids peddle the “narrative that I was just selfish” and that “I just cared about my career.” 

“It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”

In 2016. Aniston wrote an op-ed for Huffington Post, confronting weeks of fervent tabloid speculation. "This past month in particular has illuminated for me how much we define a woman's value based on her marital and maternal status," she wrote.

 "The sheer amount of resources being spent right now by press trying to simply uncover whether or not I am pregnant...points to the perpetuation of this notion that women are somehow incomplete, unsuccessful, or unhappy if they're not married with children."

Aniston told Allure that she felt propelled to write the op-ed "because it's so maddening and I'm not superhuman to the point where I can't let it penetrate and hurt." She added, however, that she has "zero regrets" about how her life turned out.

"I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, 'Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.' I don't have to think about that anymore," she said.

Jennifer Aniston and her former husband, actor Justin Theroux. Photo by Jason Merrit.

Elsewhere in the interview, Aniston said that she hates social media: 'I'm no good at it, it's torture for me' she said, despite her arrival on Instagram in 2019 being so momentous that it crashed the app for a brief time. 

“I’m really happy that we got to experience growing up, being a teenager, being in our 20s without this social media aspect,” said Aniston. “Look, the internet, great intentions, right? Connect people socially, social networking.

"It goes back to how young girls feel about themselves, compare and despair."

Aniston also said there are "no more movie stars" after the writer of the piece read a text aloud to Aniston, in which a friend wrote: “No one’s ever going to be famous the way she [Aniston] is. That kind of mass-fame phenomenon burning so bright for so long, it’s just not achievable today. She’s like a silent-film star among a generation of TikTok dipshits."

"That just gave me chills," Aniston responded.

“I’m a little choked up. I feel like it’s dying. There are no more movie stars. There’s no more glamour. Even the Oscar parties used to be so fun.”