Jennifer Aniston

Biography.

Telly Savalas's goddaughter: a 5'6" Greek girl with big breasts, a big bottom and an awkwardly long name (Anistonapoulos), who commands $100,000 per episode in the US, eighteen months into the third season series of Friends.

Jennifer was born in Sherman Oaks, CA on February 11th, 1969.  She was born to John and Nancy Aniston (now divorced).  Jennifer is of Greek descent and spent a year living there with her family when she was a child. She later relocated to an apartment on New York's Upper West Side when her father, John Aniston, landed a role on the show "Love of Life". Because of her father, who stars on NBC's daytime drama "Days of our Lives" and her godfather, Telly Savalas, Jennifer was exposed to acting at an early age. 

When she was eleven, she joined the Rudolf Steiner School's drama club.  Jennifer says, "I was always fascinated by acting, but my experience at Rudolf Steiner encouraged me to pursue it as a career. Steiner was a free-spirited school that encouraged creativity and individualism." It was here that she developed a passion for art. That same year, one of Jennifer's paintings was displayed in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. She then went on to New York's High School of the Performing Arts to begin her professional training. 

Her mother Nancy was an actress and a model, but now enjoys photography.; her godfather was Kojak, Telly Savalas.  She joined the school's drama club, and though she had always been interested in acting, she soon started to think of it as a career choice.  After two years of occasional theatre and waitressing, Aniston decided to head for Hollywood.  Between spells as a telemarketeer, a series of false starts and sitcom flops, she made at 
least one wonderfully atrocious film, Leprechaun, a Celtic slasher flick that she prefers not to discuss. "I'm confident about some things, but I'm not confident about my work," she says turning her head away. "I used to dread watching myself. I remember seeing She's The One for the first time. I was like, 'I should not be on a screen that big. It doesn't work, it doesn't come across well.' That was awful to see.".  She had little luck on auditions until her agent advised her to shed thirty pounds. (Aniston went through Nutri/System and gave a testimonial about the program on The Howard Stern Show) Soon she found work on several failed television shows, including Ferris Bueller, Molloy, The Edge, and Muddling Through. After graduating in 1987, she got roles in the Off-Broadway productions "For Dear Life" and "Dancing on Checker's Grave". In 1989 she got her first television role as a regular on "Molloy". She also has had regular roles on "The Edge" and "Ferris Bueller"(the TV show), along with a recurring part on "Herman's Head", and appearances on "Quantum Leap" and "Burkes Law". 

It wasn't until she landed the role of Rachel Green in Friends that she became a household name scores of women flocked to their hairdressers to demand the Rachel hairdo.  It is America's first hairdo, a semi-sculpted, semi-tousled shoulder-length affair that has made millions of women beg their 
hairdressers to recreate it. "My friend Chris took a razor blade and just chopped. I always thought I'd seen the style before... I guess I don't spend too much time trying to figure it out anyway."  Aniston emerged as "the sexy Friend," although co-stars Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow could hardly be considered short on looks.  Aniston tributes and temples erupted in megabytes of fan pages all over the Internet, and her followers didn't just watch the show with the sound turned down (fans Beavis and Butt- Head suggested this for optimal viewing pleasure), but compiled episode lists and spent hours discussing whether Rachel and Ross (David Schwimmer) would finally break the sexual tension and just do it. The fact that Aniston has managed to gain such a following for playing a ditsy, spoiled waitress who's a little on the bitchy side is a tribute to her appeal. 

Aniston, the celluloid star of Ed Burns' film "She's the One" is now a phenomenon, the "It" girl who, give or take a few famous models, is to the mid-Nineties what Farrah Fawcett was to the mid-Seventies."I don't know what it means to be a sex symbol," she says demurely. "When I see myself on a magazine cover I don't see it as me, 
but as someone painted, fluffed, puffed and done-up. I don't think about living up to it, it's like something that just happened."

Her fame was thrust into a new gear when Rolling Stone put her on it's cover and ran an inside expose on her lying down and displaying her naked bottom. "I was shocked. They promised there wouldn't be any rear end showing and then, oops! they went and cropped it wrong..."

Aniston prefers to stay home, watch TV and eat pizza rather than go out on the Hollywood 
party circuit. "I really am a homebody. I just potter round my house, turn on the computer and try to return e-mails." Though she briefly dated Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows, the wild rock 'n' roll carry-on is just not Aniston. "It's so unbelievably unappealing to me, I can't tell you. I'm pretty boring in that way."

The tabloids are obsessed with her, watching her every move, and frequently misreporting them. "I guess the media's been the hardest thing, having no control over trashy TV shows and newspapers. It's fascinating to me. First they said I had a boob job, then that I was going out with my boyfriend's best friend!"

She has also plugged a video tutorial for Windows '95 with Matthew Perry, and has mugged with all her Friends for Diet Coke. She appeared in an esoteric NBC public service announcement, where she declared with a soulful gaze: "Smart is sexier than stupid any day."

 Her father, John, is an actor who plays the role of Victor Kiriakis on the television soap opera "Days of Our Lives". Her Godfather was the late Telly Savalas. Some might think that this would have encouraged Jennifer to be an actress. It did. Growing up, Jennifer, who has Greek ancestors, spent some of her childhood living there. She eventually settled in New York city with her parents due to her fathers acting career. While attending school in New York, she joined the drama club. She acted for the first time at age 11. Her experience while in the drama club is what motivated Jennifer to pursue it as a career. Jennifer is also an artist. While attending school, she had one of her paintings displayed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jennifer still spends much of her free time on art, including drawing, painting and sculpting.