One of Hollywood’s most popular and best paid actresses, Jennifer Aniston, turned 50 only a few days ago, and celebrated with a much-talked-about blowout party on Saturday February 9th at the elegant Sunset Tower Hotel in L.A. that included a star-studded lineup of celebrity guests.
Aniston is best known for her role as Rachel Green on the TV sitcom Friends, which graced U.S. TV screens weekly from 1994 – 2004, and earned her Primetime Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards. But, while Rachel Green went on to become one of the most popular television characters and one of the most important female archetypes in American TV, Rachel Green is not who Aniston is in real life.
In a recent interview in Elle, Aniston spoke candidly about what it meant to play Rachel. “We live in a society that messages women: By this age, you should be married; by this age, you should have children. That’s a fairy tale. That’s the mold we’re slowly trying to break out of.”
In fact, Aniston has appeared in over 42 films, including her latest Dumplin’ which is, among other things, an homage to Dolly Parton, as well as an affirmation of diversity in beauty standards and a film about empowering women with a happy ending that’s actually not about hooking a man.
While rumors naturally spread among tabloid publications about a potential reunion between the actress and her ex-husband Brad Pitt upon the release of videos showing Brad Pitt arriving at the event, these suspicions didn’t materialize at the party, as Pitt stayed only a short while. According to People, friends say that the former couple remain friendly but don’t spend much time together. “They aren’t in regular contact, beyond an occasional text back and forth to wish each other the best when there’s been a new project or big event.”
And naturally, a 50th birthday party with a guest list that includes every Hollywood VIP counts as a big event, one about which People declared, “Basically, every single person who loves Jen attended. This included Brad. The party was a celebration of Jen’s life. Brad, for long, was a very important part of Jen’s life. ”
But the idea that Jen is still hung up on Brad is actually ludicrous. In fact, her most recent relationship was with former husband Justin Theroux from whom she divorced a year ago. Frankly discussing her personal life in an interview published in the January 2019 issue of Elle, Aniston stated that while her marriages to Pitt and Theroux didn’t last, she doesn’t consider those relationships as failures, and that happy endings don’t have to mean marriage.
In that same interview, she also opens up about the public image the media has painted of her as the scorned wife of Brad Pitt dumped for Angelina Jolie. “Maybe it has everything to do with what they’re lacking in their own life,” she hypothesizes. “What quantifies happiness in someone’s life isn’t the ideal that was created in the ’50s.”
She went on, “It’s always the woman who’s scorned and heartbroken and a spinster. It’s never the opposite. The unfortunate thing is, a lot of it comes from women,” she says. “Maybe those are women who haven’t figured out that they have the power, that they have the ability to achieve a sense of inner happiness.”
Meanwhile, Aniston is living her best life at 50, single again and working on a new show, and she recently threw that 50th birthday bash that has all the makings of an event that will go down in Hollywood history.
The guest list at Jen’s 50th featured luminaries from all walks of the entertainment industry and read like a Who’s Who of famous celebrities including such key figures as Diane Keaton, Barbara Streisand, Keith Richards, Cindy Crawford, Tom Ford, Demi Moore, James Brolin, Ellen DeGeneres, Charlie Day, Derek Blasberg, George and Amal Clooney, Jennifer Meyer, Jon Hamm, Laura Dern, Rande Gerber, and many others. Naturally, Friends’ co-stars and long-time real-life friends Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox were spotted, as well as Reese Witherspoon, with whom Aniston is producing a new TV series starring both actresses and will soon make its debut on Netflix.
Close pals Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Hudson took to Instagram posting group selfies from the event, though insiders have suggested that social media was kept to a minimum per Aniston’s request, as she herself doesn’t use social media.
The guests included all sorts of personalities, from actors, musicians, and models, to screenwriters, producers, and executive producers, representing different sectors of the entertainment industry. In attendance were such figures as Live Nation Production Chief Heather Parry, executive producer of A Star is Born, which co-stars Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, just won two Grammies, and is nominated for 8 Academy Awards as it strikes up a distribution deal with Netflix. Parry, like every one of Jen’s guests, is a frequent red carpet event veteran.
And in fact, this celebration had “red carpet vibes” all over it, as famous celebrities rolled up one after another at the hotel entrance in order to celebrate one of Hollywood’s most successful and best-loved actresses.
And as her dear friend Gwyneth Paltrow pointed out on Instagram: #JenniferAniston really does make 50 look fire!
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