[from US, 10/98]

Her show is a smash hit, her movie career is on the rise, and her boyfriend is Brad Pitt.

"When wonderful things are happening to you," says the Friends star, "your instinct is to shout it to the world."

When Jennifer Aniston was very young, she shared her room with a village of people. And even though-to be honest- those people were not readily apparent to the naked eye, she would speak to them and laugh with them. And look after them. One time when her godmother walked into her room, Jennifer started crying, saying that her godmother had killed all the little people by stepping on them. Chastened, her godmother retreated to the kitchen. Strangely, Aniston herself remembers nothing of this, but her mother has told her all about it. When I suggest, only half seriously, that she had forget all about her imaginary friends so that she could join the real world, she nods and says, "It makes sense. I'll go with that." Either that, I say, or her mother made the whole thing up. "Wouldn't you think?" fluffs Aniston. "'Let's make her think she's crazy! That will guarantee she'll become an actress.'
"

Jennifer Aniston shares with her most famous creation, Rachel from Friends, a succession of exaggerated facial expressions, short vocal interjections and brief, sweetly staged laughs. For Rachel, they are a conduit for much of her humor. When Aniston uses them for herself, they are sometimes funny, too, but mostly- in a conversation such as the one she is having today- they are used as means of deflection, or as a way of adding breezy, forged pizzazz to sentences that leave the back of her throat without it. She is not the sort of person who will easily gush out her innermost feelings, but it is only when this barrage of friendly entertainment subsides that you really feel that you are getting at any kind of truth that matters.

We first meet on the patio of a modest Italian restaurant in Los Angeles. Aniston listens attentively as the waitress recites the specials; she tilts her head and purses her lips as though she is building up to a really good punch line, then instead orders, from the menu, a tri-color salad with chicken. Afterward, Aniston says she thinks the waitress looked at us funny because we let her recite the specials, then chose simple stuff. "Because you never know what waitresses think," she says. " Did you ever waitress?"

I give her a dubious glance. (I look a little too male to be the waitressing type.)

Aniston did. It was when she was first trying to become an actress in New York, at a burger place called Jackson Hole on the Upper West Side. If people ordered something that was awful, she would quietly advise them against it. But it was not an ideal job for a woman as clumsy as she. One day she dropped an Alpine Burger- "which is just a pile of onions and mushrooms and Swiss cheese"- and a Chilli Burger on the lap of two foreigners. The customers didn't react well: "They were yelling, pretty much at the top of their lungs, 'You stupid....woman! You stupid.....stupid...' That's all I can remember: 'Stupid.' "

The very first thing Jennifer remembers is crawling across her parent's dining room floor in California, over fake-white-brick vinyl tiling. Just crawling. "I don't know why," she says. "I'm going somewhere. Going somewhere. Trying to get to the other side."

She knows that there are people in this world who would make something of this: a life that begins as a baby desperately crawling to the other side. But Aniston is not one of those people. She does one of those little dry laughs. "Let's leave that hanging there," she suggests.

Aniston's mother, Nancy, was a model who did catalog work and a little bit of acting, appearing on The Red Skelton Show. Her father, John, was an actor, best known for his 12-year run as Victor Kiriakis on the soap Days of Our Lives. Aniston's parents divorced when she was 9. It is not a subject she is comfortable discussing, though it is not quite clear whether she is more troubled by the pain of the memories or by the nosiness of the inquiries. (Perhaps something of the flavor of those times is offered by this: "My dad doesn't like to yell," she says. "And he's sort of calm about the way he has an argument. And I'm kind of like that mode 'Let's discuss it.' My mom was always a little louder.") After the divorce, Aniston stayed with her mom in New York and visited her father, who had moved to Los Angeles. Life with her mother wasn't simple. "It was interesting," Aniston says. "The good, the bad, and the ugly." She says that she has always just wanted everyone to be happy, and her implication is quite clearly that her mother often wasn't.

Aniston liked to watch Duran Duran videos on MTV at her friend's house. (She was particularly taken by Simon Le Bon. "He was very cute," she insists. "He had a very sexy voice.") When she was 14, she did a successful 4 hour audition for New York High School of Performing Arts, including two monologues, one from The Sign in Sidney Bernstein's Window and one from Neil Simon's I Ought to Be in Pictures. When I ask what her specific talents were, she says, "I don't think they considered me to have many talents." She says she was lazy. Nonetheless, she always knew she would end up as an actress. (She loved Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn. And first, before either of them, she had loved Valerie Bertinelli.)

When she left school, she tried to find parts and took night classes in psychology. "I was going to be a shrink if I couldn't be an actor," she says. "I like to talk to people; I like people to talk to me." She lasted only about five months- "We were into Fraud and all of those guys and the different philosophies of human behavior," she recalls-and then she got a play. She never went back to class.

In her first play, Dancing on Checker's Grave, she kissed a girl onstage every night for six weeks. (In the story, the two girls hangout at lunchtime in a cemetery, talking about life and sexuality. Aniston would sing a pop song to the other girl; then they'd kiss.) She says it was something she'd never done before they rehearsed it. But it was no problem at all. "I probably was thinking, wow, this is really cool, kissing a girl," she says.

Later she moved to Los Angeles. For two weeks she sold time shares in the Poconos over the phone. "I was so bad," she says. "I didn't sell one. I didn't like disturbing people."

From her crib, Jennifer would rip the sunflower wallpaper off the wall. She would see how big a piece she could peel off in one piece. She was never told not to do it, so the sunflower stripping continued and the bare space without wallpaper just got bigger and bigger. ("I think I'm just someone who didn't enjoy wallpaper," she deduces. "I prefer paint." This prejudice has persisted until the present day: "I think paints are much more interesting. The textures. Wallpaper is like a patch.")

In most Jennifer Aniston interviews, there is a ritual observed in which the interviewer mentions her first movie - an abysmal 1993 horror film called Leprechaun- and she screeches theatrically, "You're not going to do that to me." Today is no exception. I mention it; she screeches; I tell her that I am.

"I've denied this movie for years," she says.

You can't deny it. You should be nice to me. I had to watch it.

"I had to watch it!" I didn't make you watch it. I force-fed you Leprechaun?

You only had to make it and I had to live with it. I had to watch it.

Sorry. I'll buy you lunch.

While Aniston was making Leprechaun, she had no clue. She knew it was kind of corny, but the director kept saying how funny and great it was going to be. She was 21. When she went to a screening, she sneaked out before the end. " I was horrified," she says, "and not in the wonderful way that Scream horrifies you."

She pushes her left hand toward me, palm down. "I still have a scar from that fucking movie, can you believe that?" she says. The scar is on the back of her left hand, between her thumb and forefinger. She was - as you won't recall if you have lived a sensible life - poking the leprechaun in the eye with a billy club as it tried to attack her in a police car, and she scratched her hand across a jagged door lock. The scar has faded but never gone. It acts as a reminder.

Aniston's father is of Greek decent. He was born in America, but his father came from Greece to America and ran a diner. The story she has always told in interviews-the story she was told by her mother- is that her grandfather, who needed to find an easier, more user-friendly American version of their Greek family name, Anastassakis, drove through Anniston, Ala., and decided that Anniston, modified a little to make the name more individual, would do perfectly well.

But a year and a half ago, her father phoned her asking where she'd gotten this silly story. And now she doesn't know how they got the name, though she knows that there is only on other Aniston family in the country and they are related. It is a totally made-up name.

"I'm not real," she says. "'Jesus! She's not real!'"

The success of 'Friends' gave Aniston a second chance at a movie career. She has edged into it. In Edward Burns' sprightly She's The One, she plays the unflashy, rejected wife. In the clunky 'Til There Was You, she plays an almost pointlessly incidental supporting role as the principal female's best friend. Her first lead role was a career obsessed ad executive in last summer's Picture Perfect. "Let's not talk about that movie," she says, perhaps a little overdefensively. "That's another one we can just pass over, don't you think?" It is, nonetheless, the film with one of her best onscreen lines. Walking into a bathroom, furious with herself, she slams down her handbag and says, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." "Good line, huh?" She says when I mention it. "I came up with that one." There were two s---s in the script, but she improvised the rest. "Nine of them were my s---s," she beams. "I've made strides in my career." The director, Glenn Gordon Caron (the man behind Moonlighting), remembers her rather sweet initial reaction when the film was finished: " The first time she saw the film, the 20th Century Fox logo came up, the drums and everything, and she said, 'Oh, my God! This is a dream I've had all my life.' " He also has some thoughts on her appeal. "If she didn't have the humor," he says, "she's so attractive, you'd be put off. But, she's not the most beautiful girl in the world. She's, like, the second most beautiful girl. She's the one you'd go after once you realized you weren't going to get the most beautiful girl."

Her most recent, and by far her best, came in this spring's The Object of My Affection, in which she played a woman who falls in love with a gay man. It is also the first in which she seems to take any pride. "I know what it's supposed to feel like, " she says. "I don't think I did it before."

Meanwhile, Friends carries on. This season will be the fifth, and the principals are all contracted to do one more year after that. "And then we'll probably go back for more," Aniston predicts. "They'll probably want us to." She is not one of those actors who are looking to run headlong away from the thing that has made them popular. "I'm happy doing it," she says. "I'm with it till it ends." She says that the cast will decide as a group. If one of them wants to leave, then she'll leave.

How do other members of 'Friends' appear in your dreams?

I'm not a good dream rememberer. I remember I dreamed a lot about Lisa (Kudrow) and her baby. I just remember thinking that (the baby) would be a girl. I was so convinced it was a girl. (It was a boy.) And I've had very brotherly - sisterly fights with Matthew Perry once in awhile. And we have that relationship in life. But I'm sure they've all (been in my dreams) at some point in my life. They're my friends, you know.

Some of them call me; they are her friends. Says Kudrow, "To me, Jennifer has a real artist's heart. Jennifer is all love and emotion." She laughs. "Acting is the perfect occupation for a person like that. It seems to me she just came into the world like that. Like some people have blue eyes or long legs- it's a personality trait you can't do anything about."

"She's a real girl's girl," says Courteney Cox. "Guys love her, but women really love her and are not threatened by her. It's a really good sign when someone has a lot of good girlfriends."

Jennifer had a couple of dolls, growing up. One was a Barbie head with hair you could brush and a face you could put makeup on. The other was a Cher doll. Out of shoeboxes she made homes for bodiless Barbie and Cher: "I'd create a whole apartment complex from shoeboxes, and toilet paper for curtains. The Cher doll was a tall doll- thank God my dad had big feet."

Jennifer didn't really know who Cher was, but she loved that the doll had long black hair; and she adored Cher's high-heeled shoes. "I was obsessed with high heels when I was little," she says.

As a famous adult, she has met Cher. But she has never mentioned the doll. "I think there are some things that are just better left unsaid," she says wisely.

Aniston has left her Merit cigarettes at home, so she gets the waitress to beg a couple of Marlboros from the kitchen. She pulls a book of matches from her bag to light one. I can't help noticing that the matches are from a St. Petersburg, Fla., strip club called the Vixen-"Club With the Tub," the matchbox helpfully reminds. On one side is a photo of a girl halfheartedle disguising her nakedness with her arms.

Aniston follows my gaze to. "Now, why do I have those matches?" she says, laughing. She insists that she hasn't been to Florida since she was 7 and that she has never been to the Vixen. "This is when we went into a Mexican resturaunt in the valley, and this is the matches that we got," she says. "So whoever the bartender was..." Whoever "we" would be in this case is not explained.

Recently, according to the world's gossip pages, Aniston has been seeing Brad Pitt. (Their semipublic appearances in each other's company have included the Tibetan Freedom Concert and the August nupitals of Kathy Najimy.) I ask her about it. "It's something that I'm not even going to entertain or talk about," she says, laughing. "It's the moment isn't it?" she adds, by which she clearly means that it is the moment in the discussion that she has been expecting and guarding against. "It's just one of those things that I just want to, as much as I can, not give it any weight, or give it anything, and that's hard to do. But I just don't want to talk about it."

I imagine that photo of you two together at the Tibetan Freedom Concert has been published about 2,000 times.

(Wryly) Mm-hmmm. Yeah. They got a lot of legwork out of that one.

What do you think when you see it?

(Pauses) Oy.

Is that with a "y" or an "i"?

You can decide. (Returning to the previous question) You just think: Here we go. You know, you want to live your life, and you want to have fun. You can't start something privately, you can't break up privately, you can't lose a parent privately-those are all the little thorns that come along with this beautiful rose. You kind of get a prick now and again.

Do you think you've talked too much in the past? (There have been others, including actor Tate Donovan, from who she split this spring after a two-and-a-half-year relationship, and Counting Crows singer, Adam Duritz.)

Yeah, I definitely do. And those are the things you kind of need to learn. Because when wonderful things are happening to your life, your instinct is to scream it to the world-who-ever you are- that a wonderful thing in your life is happening. But there's definately a price you pay for that. Because then, God forbid, that time comes around when you're no longer together. But it's just when you're starting with something-I remember, with Tate, they had us married before we'd even decided we wanted to go on another date.

Well, similarly, they have you more or less married with children now.

Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I 've been married with children. It's funny to me.

Some potentially related questions:

How many times have you been in love?

I don't know. Love looks differently. I think it has a different face each time.

But more than once?

I'm sure, yeah.

And less than 12?

Yes. Less than five.

Which is worse: the guilt of leaving or the pain of being left?

Oh. Hmm. They're both pretty intense. It's just a different form of pain. Let's face it, it's harder to be the abandoned one. Guilt is a useless feeling anyway. If you really break it down, I think what guilt is, is such a selfish emotion. Feeling pity for someone? I would never want someone to feel pity for me. Guilt, hey, I suffer from it a lot. In life, not just in relationships.

Why?

I don't know. I just do. Maybe it comes from family- wanting to please and not feeling that I have, the best I could. There are many times I feel I gave my mom unnecessary stress.

Why do actresses always end up going out with actors?

That's who you meet a lot, who understands you in your life. You're creative people. I don't think it's just like, " I'm just going to date actors."

You've never declared to yourself: No more actors.

I've never thought of that.

Because plenty of people say that.

I know they do. "No more actresses." So many men say that. Which I think is so mean. But the thing is, hey, man, some are crazy and some are not, like anybody. I hate it when people say that, because a person is a person.

So you think they mean"....because actresses are crazy."

(Nods) They think they're crazy. And I'm telling you, there are a lot of real nut jobs out there.

So: Jennifer Aniston-crazy or not?

No, I'm not crazy. I don't think I'm crazy. I think I'd know. I'm about as dull as they come.

That sounds like camouflage.

I am pretty dull, though. I mean, dull in the sense of the Hollywood scene. I don't mean dull. I'm not a dull person. You know what I mean. I've never gone down that wild, crazy road of sex, drugs, and rock and roll and partying and out all night.

Why ever not?

I don't know. And there's a part of me that really wants to. I mean, I go out and play, but I'm talking about those people who are on the edge- and we've lost some of them.

Still, the edge can be an attractive place to visit.

Uh-huh. And I have. Visited.

You just don't stay overnight?

No. Maybe once.

What's the best smell in the world?

The best smell in the world is that man that you love.

And how is that smell?

Oh, I don't know. It's like your dad. That smell of your dad.

And what do you do when you smell that smell?

Sigh.

The Aniston family moved from Los Angeles to Eddyston, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, for six months, where her father's Greek relatives lived. The family was preparing for a move to Greece. Her father had decided to give up acting, to become a doctor. He couldn't get into any medical schools in America-he was too old- so they went to Athens, Jennifer was 5.

While living in Athens, she began to speak Greek, though most of it has now gone. "For the most part," she concedes, "it's just staring at a bunch of mouths moving."

Anyway, after a year, her father's American agent told him there was a part on a soap opera. He came back, for good. He was on daytime television for years.

The cracks in Aniston's careful veneer show themselves at the strangest times. When she can't answer a particular question I have posed, I suggest we pass over it in silence. She begins to laugh, then stops herself. " I was going to get really gross for a second," she says. "Not while we're eating."

I press her, and she starts laughing uncontrollably. "You know when you..." she says, and then cracks up again. "I can't be talking about this." She pulls herself together. "I'm talking about a bodily function. When they're silent. And you just pass over it."

What you're talking about is a silent fart.

(Nods, apparently relieved.) Right. You're absolutely right.

You just couldn't say it, could you?

I just couldn't say it.

Now, why couldn't you say that?

(Giggles hysterically) I don't know.

Is it because your public image is that you're too nice to say the word "fart"?

(Her giggles rise in pitch.) Stop saying it!

Oddly, this seems to free up something in Aniston. A few minutes later we are discussing her most recently filmed movie, Office Space, in which she has a supporting role as a waitress. It was made by Mike Judge, the co-creator of King of the Hill and Bevis and Butt-head. "I love King of the Hill," she says. "Beavis and Butt-head, I have my issues with. It's what it is. They're such idiots, and such idiots have conquered the world."

It is while weighing the appeal of Beavis and Butthead that Aniston unexpectedly announces," I think one of the greatest joys in my life is my little 'fart sludge' toy." More laughter. "There's a lot of flatulence in this interview, let me tell you." And then she explains: "It's like this goo. You put your finger in it and it makes this....It's just the funniest thing in the world."

She says that her fart obsession began when the make up artist on The Object of My Affection began playing a tape of someone farting in the makeup trailer. "It is sort of occasional," she says, " and then it goes into like a symphony." Then she discovered "fart in a can." "That pretty much took over the entire shoot," costar Paul Rudd says. "Everyone was obsessed. I don't care if you're a surgeon or a plumber- farts are funny, and they never get old."

Returning to her regular job, Aniston decided that she should share her new discovery. So she introduced her fart-sludge toy on the Friends set. "I don't think I could have ever been happier," she says. "Then it was like, 'Take it away, just get it out of her hands.' Because I'd just do it and forget I was doing it in conversation."

"No one," says Kudrow, "does it as well as she can."
Is that a compliment? "It's a huge compliment," Kudrow says. "It's funny when she does it, because it doesn't seem very sophmoric- it seems very sophisticated. Because she's so subtle. It's fun to watch go through her array of embarassments."

On Aniston's joy in farts, Judge has this thought: "Demi Moore was kind of that way as well. I guess when you're America's darling, it's a nice release, that kind of humor."

When Jennifer was young-too young to be scared and careful- she was riding her tricycle around the swimming pool. Her 4-year-old's judgement failed her. "Just bad gauging," she recalls. "I missgauged it." And in she went, the weight of the bike pulling her under. In followed Dimitri, her white poodle- not, it seems, to save her but just to join in. Luckily, her half- brother, Johnny, was nearby. He knew what had to be done. He jumped in, carefully grabbed the object of his rescue mission and safely lifted Dimitri out of the water.

The next afternoon, we meet at the chic natural-food hypermarket Erewhon. After loading up at the salad bar, Aniston marches up and down the outside walkway until she is sure she has found the table with the most privacy. We are next to the sidewalk but between two potted bushes. She is concerned that my tape recorder will draw attention to what is going on here- and hence, who is going on here- so she carefully drapes a paper napkin over it to form a precarious tent-shaped structure.

She tells me that this morning she has been at her house with Johnny and her niece. Johnny, who is nine years older and works as an assistant director on commercials, left home when Aniston was 7, and sometimes she felt like an only child. The situation sometimes confused her. She recalls learning that Johnny had another father: "It never made sense to me. I didn't understand that. I mean, who is Johnny's other father? He must be my father too."

As we eat, a car alarm goes off. "OK," she declares, annoyed, "those things are useless, and they should be taken away. They don't do anything. Just get a Lojack and call it a day."

One day about three years ago, driving to the studio on the Warner Bros. lot, Aniston cut somebody off. When she pulled into the studio driveway, the other car screeched up behind her. The driver was a famous director. (Aniston won't name him.) For the moment, she did not recognize him and he did not recognize her. "He just proceeded to scream at me at the top of his lungs every profanity you can imagine," she says. "He would not stop: 'What the fuck is your problem? Who the hell do you think you are? You shouldn't be allowed in a car! You shouldn't be allowed on the road! You shouldn't be allowed. I don't know who you are, but I'm going to find out and make your life miserable!' The only word that came out of my mouth, the only word I could think of at the time was 'Why?' And he said, 'Because you're a fucking terrible driver and you shouldn't be allowed to drive.' "

When he had gone, Aniston asked the guard what the guy's problem was. Instead, the guard told Aniston who he was. And given that this is a world of which celebrity and power are more important than right or wrong, the guard had a suggestion. "He said, 'you might want to send him some flowers,' " says Aniston. "I said, 'Are you kidding? No f---ing way I'm sending that man flowers.' "

The angry director subsequently discovered who the driver from hell was. Knowing this, he did not try to make her life miserable. (This is, truly, a world in which celebrity and power are more important than right or wrong.) Instead, three hours later, on the Friends set, Aniston received the biggest bouquet of flowers.

Jennifer's godfather was Telly Savalas. Kojak. He had been best man at her parents' wedding. He would- and in this he was riding a little close to the pool' edge of self parody - give her lollipops. He also gave her a pink bike.

"A big pink banana seat," she says. "It was very cool."

A tanned, trim old man walking along the sidewalk approaches our table. He is on the other side of a low barrier. He introduces himself to Aniston.

"Would you be interested in coming to Monte Carlo for Prince Rainer's golf and tennis thing?" he inquires.

Aniston is, momentarily, at a loss for words. Her mouth is open, but nothing comes out, and behind her eyes you can see her trying to compose the substance, and tone, of her reply: "When? Now?" She laughs.

"Next year, in July."

"Wow," she says. "Maybe. Well, if I can, I would love that."

It is perfectly obvious that, come next July, she will not be in Monte Carlo.

He leaves. "That's funny, right?" she says. "Is he just assuming that I'm not going to be working next summer?"

She puts her cigarette out in her half full tub of mayonnaise and talks on.

Do you ever wish you were a man?

No. I mean, you think of those moments when you have to put makeup on, like in the show, and it takes you an hour and a half to get your hair and makeup done, and the guys get to come in 10 minutes before the show starts. They can play basketball and sauna.

What would be most interesting about being a man?

I would imagine the member. Don't you think? I think that would be a wild thing, physically, to have to experience. This thing swinging around.

Which three questions do you wish you were never asked again?

How I am like my character. Personal questions. The hair.

The hair. That's not really a question is it?

Oh, sure it is. (Puts on an annoying, bleating voice) "How do you feel about the hair?" "What are you doing next with the hair? (winces) It feels nice, being reduced to a hairstyle.

What is your favorite photograph of yourself?

I don't like any photographs of myself. It's not me. It's definately a different person. Especially that Rachel shit. And with that old hairdo. Oh, I hate looking at those.

Is that because you now hate that look- or because of the baggage that comes with it?

It's both. And it's also not a great haircut. It looked terrible on me.

What do you think when you look at those photos?

Oh, I don't mean hate. That's a really strong word. I just go, "Oh, look, there's a younger..."

You think: If she knew then what I know now.

Yeah, really. If she only knew. That poor dumb girl. Little, little, tiny tart.

Why do you have no tattoos?

It's so funny. Because I've been thinking about it so much lately.

Why are you thinking about it again?

I don't know. I'm in that phase.

Where would you put it?

Probably somewhere where, you know, just your loved one would be able to enjoy.

What do you drink to get drunk?

Wine. Cosmopolitans. If I'm really going for it, then I probably go for a shot of vodka or maybe a little shot of tequila.

What causes a rainbow?

Something wonderful happening.