A new celebrity pairing has been brought to our attention – and this one is particularly left field. According to gossip website Deux Moi, Jennifer Aniston has started dating the renowned life coach, transformational expert, author and master hypnotist, Jim Curtis.
Curtis was first put on social media sleuths’ radars when he and Aniston started following each other on Instagram and liking and commenting on each other’s posts. Then came their dinner together at hotel Ventana Big Sur in Northern California in June. And most recently they were spotted in Mallorca celebrating the Fourth of July weekend, with Aniston introducing Curtis to Jason Bateman and his wife Amanda Anka, before they all partied together on a yacht. All of which is, by today’s standards, more than enough to spark an onslaught of relationship rumours.
Who is Jim Curtis?
After battling with a chronic illness for over 20 years, Curtis turned to 'hypno-realisation' and neurogenesis and later became a hypnotist, life coach and author, helping thousands of others in the process. On his website he writes, 'I’ve helped thousands of others break free from their past to create an entirely new reality of powerful loving connection.' It is unclear whether Curtis has been married himself, but given that he is an expert in guiding people through divorce, it's possible that he has been through one himself.
Aniston knows more than anyone that in Hollywood there is no such thing as an innocent sighting. Ever since her marriage to Brad Pitt fell apart in 2005 after his stint in Mr & Mrs Smith opposite his future-wife (turned ex-wife) Angelina Jolie, Aniston has been bombarded with speculation about her love life.
She was first linked to Vince Vaughn in late 2005 after they co-starred in The Break-Up, but the relationship ended the following year. In 2008, Aniston said, ‘I call Vince my defibrillator. He literally brought me back to life. My first gasp of air was a big laugh!’ Then came a string of rumoured romances with British model Paul Sculfor, singer John Mayer, Bradley Cooper, Gerrard Butler and restauranteur Harry Morton. In 2011, she started dating Justin Theroux after they met on the set of Tropic Thunder, who she later married in 2015 in a secret, A-list ceremony officiated by Jimmy Kimmel. However, at the start of 2018 they announced they were getting divorced.
Since then, Aniston has taken pains to keep her personal life as private as possible. Save for a brief rumour that she was dating David Schwimmer in 2021 after they both admitted they had feelings for each other during the filming of Friends, she is often ‘tied to someone’ for a day or two and then the unsubstantiated rumour is swiftly forgotten.
However, whether it’s because she’s Rachel from Friends or what happened with Pitt all those years ago, the world is desperate – unhealthily so – to see Aniston find love. She is the first to admit that she has looked for it herself and has spoken candidly about her hopes to have children, but also that the unrelenting media attention about her personal life has done nothing to help.
‘It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,’ she said in 2022. ‘All the 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.’
The question, then, is whether she’s seeking spiritual guidance from Curtis, dating him, or both. He is, after all, a specialist in helping people ‘break free from their past patterns’ to find love. Just last week Aniston liked his Instagram post which reads, ‘Repeat these affirmations to heal and recover from a divorce, breakup or difficult romance and begin to call in the new empowered, healthy and divine love.’
In April, she also admitted that she’d been undergoing hypnotherapy to combat her fear of flying. ‘It’s shockingly good,’ she explained. Quite how good remains to be seen…
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).