Jennifer Aniston has made a career out being Hollywood’s girl next door and Rom Com Queen, but has had to bat off rumours about her fertility and potential pregnancies for most of it.
Now, after decades of scrutiny, she has opened up about her IVF journey and struggle to conceive for the first time in an interview with Allure magazine, confirming that she had spent years trying to have a child.
‘I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,’ she told the magazine.
‘All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. 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.’
However, she also added that she has ‘zero regrets’.
‘I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, “Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.” I don’t have to think about that anymore,’ she said.
There’s countless instances of when she’s been forced to hit back at the constant scrutiny, telling The Hollywood Reporter last year, ‘I used to take it all very personally — the pregnancy rumours and the whole "Oh, she chose career over kids" assumption.
‘This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don’t want to be a mother, and how selfish that is.’
Just a few months prior, a rep had to deny rumours she was set to announce she was adopting on the long-awaited Friends reunion, calling the stories ‘a complete fabrication’.
And in 2017, she candidly said, ‘My ideas of what a happy life and fulfilled life are might be different from other peoples’. I think it’s to each their own. It’s nobody’s right to judge someone else’s choices
‘No one knows what’s going on beyond the four walls of your home, of these people who are having or not having children It’s a very sensitive area to go to, especially. It’s sensitive to me.’
Of course, it’s natural to wonder why JenAn has decided to open up about her fertility journey now, after so many years of swatting away speculation – but at the end of the day, it’s her narrative to control.
‘I’ve spent so many years protecting my story about IVF. I’m so protective of these parts because I feel like there’s so little that I get to keep to myself,’ she continued. ‘The [world] creates narratives that aren’t true, so I might as well tell the truth. I feel like I’m coming out of hibernation. I don’t have anything to hide.’