Jennifer Aniston: “Friends” star approaches aging calmly

The Hollywood dream factory is all about beauty, glamor and eternal youth. The pressure to stay young and attractive weighs particularly heavily on actresses. “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston (55) has apparently not fallen for the anti-aging craze. On the contrary: the actress approaches aging quite calmly, as she now says in an interview.

“Of course we’re all getting older, but how can we thrive as we get older? By giving our bodies the attention they deserve,” she said. “Personally, I loved my thirties, but my twenties were nothing. I was a nightmare.” It’s important to love your own body: “It does what it can. It’s always there for us, so we shouldn’t be too strict with it,” says Aniston.

Good “sleep hygiene” is particularly important, says Aniston, although she can’t stand the term. “Sleep and I have a difficult relationship. I want to love him and I’m sure he wants to love me, but we’re having a difficult time, especially the last ten or 15 years.”

The actress also knows the reason: “Our bodies, our brains are not designed to absorb so much information. We used to have a television and a radio and that was it. We watched the news at six o’clock and that was all, plus one in the morning Newspaper.” She had to impose limits on herself.

To maintain her mental health, Aniston says she tries to meditate in the morning and stretch before bed. “I try to lie in bed at 10pm on weekdays, turn everything off and just sit and let the world wash over me.”

But balance is also important: Aniston herself is a fan of the “80/20 approach”. “80 percent healthy lifestyle and then 20 percent: drinking a martini, eating pizza and burgers and staying up late with friends,” explains the 55-year-old. “You have to live your life. No restrictions – except hard drugs.”

She approaches aging with “positivity and gratitude.” “What is the alternative? I try not to think about age. The world will always tell us how old you are and what women in society should do when they reach this or that age. […] This is all nonsense. We can make our own rules.”

An important part of growing older happily is having a community. “And with screens, computers, phones, iPads and watches, we’re losing that community. Those of us who were lucky enough to be part of the generation where we didn’t have any of those could sit down and talk, or get bored and figure out how we can entertain ourselves and let our minds be creative… Nowadays no one is bored anymore.”