Jennifer Aniston Regretted Some of the Movies She Used to Make
Jennifer Aniston was interested in building up her film resume during and after her role in her hit television series Friends. But there were a couple of mistakes she made with her movie career that Aniston wished she could take back.
Jennifer Aniston once opened up about her career choices
Aniston wasn’t too proud of some of the movies in her filmography. She once admitted that something she had to change about herself was accepting too many projects.
“There was a time when I worked and worked and worked. I loved it. I’m trying to be better at that,” she said in a 2016 interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “I’m a bit of a people pleaser. I’ve got to stop. Some of the movies I’ve made, I bow my head in slight shame over.”
Aniston expressed a desire to add more variety to her filmography, but this was hard. She became a bit too well known for her role as Rachel Green in Friends. The popularity she reached from the sitcom may have gotten her a lot of film roles. But they weren’t always the roles she was looking for.
“I can do other things. I feel a sense of freedom that I hadn’t necessarily felt before. Also, you have to start taking chances in an industry that’s very insecure about taking chances on people,” she said. “People forget who actors are. They say, ‘You’re too known to play that part. You can’t disappear.’ And we’re like, ‘Give us a chance. We’ll disappear.'”
One of the roles Aniston had a chance to disappear into was in the movie Cake. The independent drama saw Aniston playing a troubled woman who experienced strange visions of an acquaintance’s future. She fought hard for the part, as it couldn’t have been anymore different than the characters she’s played in the past.
“Cake was something that I really had to lobby for. Usually, I don’t even get the opportunity to go in the room ‘cause it’s usually given to an actress that is already in the director or screenwriter’s mind,” Aniston once told Collider. “Usually, I’m not put onto those lists. To be quite honest, I’ve even heard back, ‘Too much baggage with that. Too known, and won’t be able to disappear.’ That just made me want, more and more, to find something that I could dig my heels into. It’s a blessing and a curse. You’re so lucky to be a working actor ‘cause god knows it’s really hard to be a working actor in this industry. I’m quite grateful, every day. But there’s a lot of ability in all of us, and it’s a catch-22. If you give me the job, I’ll show you I can do it.”
Jennifer Aniston once revealed the 1 movie she feared would ruin her career
There were some films that turned out to be better than Aniston might’ve expected them to. The 1999 feature Office Space was a project she didn’t think would amount to much while shooting it. It didn’t help that the satirical comedy wasn’t much of a success at the box office. It wasn’t until later on that more fans would discover Office Space on home video.
Nowadays, the film receives much praise, with many considering it a cult classic. But Aniston wouldn’t have guessed that Office Space would become the hit it turned into.
“Office Space [was] one of the first movies I ever did,” Aniston once told InStyle. “No one thought it would become the cult classic that it did, but it’s pretty cool if you ask me.”
“There’s loads of movies where you’re thinking: ‘Oh god, this is just… how am I going to survive this in my future?’ And then it’s a cult… ‘something’ because it’s so embarrassing,” she added.
However, Aniston didn’t feel the same way for the 1993 horror film Leprechaun. Aniston played a teenager who was being hunted by an ominous take on a mythical figure. She didn’t feel, however, that Leprechaun experienced the same turnaround as Office Space did. To this day, she considered the movie an “embarrassment.”
