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Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston has opened up about her private 20-year struggle to conceive – and criticised the speculation she’s faced as a result of having no children.
The 56-year-old Friends star, who currently appears in TV drama The Morning Show, said she felt pressured to address “the narrative” that suggested she hadn’t had kids because she is “a selfish workaholic”.
“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,” Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar UK.
The actor said her personal life is not anybody’s business but “there comes a point when you can’t not hear the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family”.
Aniston said that as she has gotten older, she cares less about correcting the falsehoods “because it will happen eventually”.
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Jennifer Aniston says she wants to correct the narrative about why she hasn’t had a baby (Getty)
“The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away,” she continued – but admitted she had felt the speculation to be unjust.
“Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice – when something has been said that isn’t true, and I need to right the wrong. And then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.”
Aniston, who was married to Brad Pitt from 2000 to 2005 and to Justin Theroux from 2015 to 2018, previously said “the baby-making road” had been challenging for her.
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Aniston stars in Apple TV+ drama ‘The Morning Show’ (Apple TV+)
She told Allure in 2022: “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. But I have zero regrets.
“My late thirties, forties, I’d gone through really hard s***, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be. I was trying to get pregnant.”
She said that “years and years of speculation was really hard”, adding: “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it.”
Aniston previously said the claim that her marriage to Pitt had ended because she didn’t want children was an “absolute lie”.