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<\/p>\nLooking at Jennifer Aniston\u2019s success, it\u2019s easy to think she had an incredible childhood that paved the way for a perfect life.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old is blessed with beauty, talent, and genes \u2013 her father is John Aniston, famed for his role as the mobster Victor Kiriakis in Days of Our Lives \u2013 however, life wasn\u2019t so fortunate for her as a young girl.<\/p>\n
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James Devaney\/WireImage<\/p>\n
Opening up about the importance of letting go of \u201ctoxic\u201d anger, Aniston says of her once estranged mother, \u201cthank you for showing me what never to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Aniston navigated through her formative years, her mother\u2019s critiques on her appearance became more pronounced. Reminiscing about that time, she shared, \u201cShe was from this world of, \u2018Honey, take better care of yourself,\u2019 or \u2018Honey, put your face on,\u2019 or all of those odd sound bites that I can remember from my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jennifer Aniston was born February 11, 1969, to parents John Aniston and Nancy Dow, who were married from 1965 to 1980.<\/p>\n
John, who passed at 89 in 2022, was best known for his role on Days of Our Lives, that he played on and off for 37 years until his passing. Her mother, who passed at 79 in 2016, was an actor with a few minor roles in TV series like The Beverly Hillbillies and The Wild Wild West.<\/p>\n
When Aniston\u2019s parents divorced when she was nine, the Cake star said \u201cit really screwed up\u201d her mom. But, Aniston \u201cwas thrilled to get out\u201d of the old family home in New York City that \u201cwas not a fun house to live in.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Speaking with her pal Sandra Bullock for Interview Magazine in 2020, Aniston further explained how \u201cgrowing up in a household that was destabilized and felt unsafe\u201d helped her deal with life when it derails.<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching adults being unkind to each other and witnessing certain things about human behavior that made me think: \u2018I don\u2019t want to do that. I don\u2019t want to be that. I don\u2019t want to experience this feeling I\u2019m having in my body right now. I don\u2019t want anyone else that I ever come in contact with ever to feel that.\u201d The Just Go With It star continued, \u201cI guess I have my parents to thank\u2026You can either be angry or be a martyr, or you can say, \u2018You\u2019ve got lemons? Let\u2019s make lemonade.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside of the family, it was also challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201dI was one of those kids who got sort of bullied, and I don\u2019t know why,\u201d Aniston said and added:<\/p>\n
\u201dI was one of the kids who the others would decide to make fun of. It was an odd period of time during fifth, sixth, seventh grades. I was a little on the chubby side, so I was just that kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of the time, it felt like her mom was hurling lemons at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have had to do personal work that was long overdue, parts of me that hadn\u2019t healed from the time I was a little kid,\u201d Aniston shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had a temper. I can\u2019t tolerate that. If I get upset, I will discuss [things]. I will never scream and get hysterical like that.\u201d Aniston, completely unaware of her staggering beauty, continues, \u201cShe was critical. She was very critical of me. Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn\u2019t. I never was. I honestly still don\u2019t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine. She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Speaking with the Hollywood Reporter, the Horrible Bosses star reveals that she never lived up to Dow\u2019s expectations, and there were years they didn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
Aniston adds, \u201cI did not come out the model child she\u2019d hoped for, and it was something that really resonated with me, this little girl just wanting to be seen and wanting to be loved by a mum who was too occupied with things that didn\u2019t quite matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aniston stopped speaking to Dow after her mom wrote the 1999 tell-all book, \u201cFrom Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir.\u201d The star was reportedly furious that her mother had violated her privacy.<\/p>\n
In fact, Aniston was so upset that she didn\u2019t invite her mother to her 2000 wedding to Brad Pitt, although they eventually reconciled after the couple divorced.<\/p>\n
But she reportedly hadn\u2019t seen her mother in several years prior to the passing of Dow, who earlier suffered a couple of strokes.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the relationship she had with her dad was quite different.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHe thought I was going down the road of absolute destruction and heartache,\u201d she said of following his path in acting. \u201cAnd then I kind of got a whole different relationship with him once he had something to talk to me about. Which was, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re an actor. I\u2019m an actor.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Aniston is way more than just an actor.<\/p>\n
One of the highest paid actors in the industry, Aniston, who holds a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, has been listed several times as one of the world\u2019s most beautiful women, and runs LolaVie, a haircare company. She\u2019s also the founder of Echo Films, a production company with titles she stars in, like The Switch, Dumplin\u2019 and Murder Mystery 2.<\/p>\n
In June 2022, before he passed, John received a Daytime Emmy lifetime achievement award, which was presented in a pre-recorded segment by his daughter, who praised him for his decades-long acting career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking at Jennifer Aniston\u2019s success, it\u2019s easy to think she had an incredible childhood that paved the way for a perfect life. The 54-year-old is blessed with… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n