After years of speculation from fans, “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston admitted that she did try to have children in the past but was ultimately unsuccessful.
The 53-year-old Emmy Award winner discussed her past desire to become a mother during a recent interview with Allure, saying that during her “late 30s, 40s” she’d “gone through really hard s***” involving infertility.
“I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston told the publication. “All the years and years of speculation … It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it.”
“I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So, here I am today,” she continued. “The ship has sailed.”
As for the ultimate outcome, the “Morning Show” actress said she has “zero regrets.”
Aniston went on to say that she’s in a good place right now and is “proud of my wrinkles and gray hair.” She also spoke about being relieved to be past her child-bearing years.
“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.
Aniston addressed the media frenzy over whether she’d ever have kids. She recalled gossip magazines attributing her ambition and refusal to have children was the catalyst for her divorce from ex-husband Brad Pitt.
“God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child,” she told Allure. “And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”
Aniston has addressed the media speculation over her wanting kids multiple times before, alluding to the fact that she may have been trying to have children.
“I used to take it all very personally — the pregnancy rumors and the whole ‘Oh, she chose career over kids’ assumption,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t … can I have kids?’ They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”
She went on to compare herself to country singer Dolly Parton, who is also childless.
“It’s the same with Dolly Parton; Dolly Parton never had kids. But are people giving her s*** for it? No, no one’s tried to put her in a white picket fence,” Aniston said at the time.
