Jennifer Aniston's Career, Stardom, and Heartbreaks

There are actors whom we've spent so much time watching, that it can sometimes feel like we know them.

Jennifer Aniston has played Rachel Green on Friends for a decade - and we were there with her every step of the way.

But despite this, that feeling of familiarity is just an illusion. While we may know the ins and outs of Rachel's life, Jennifer's life is an entirely different story. Or is it?

So, who is Jennifer Aniston? What secrets and surprising facts do her life-story hold? How did her on-screen relationships on Friends inform it? And what does the future hold in store for her?

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Read on to find out more about Aniston’s life, her relationship with Brad Pitt - their past and possible future? - and her road to superstardom.

Jennifer Joanna Aniston was born in Los Angeles on February 11, 1969.

Her parents, John Aniston (of Says of Our Lives fame) and Nancy Dow, were both television stars - and her godfather, Telly Savalas, was an Academy Award-nominated actor - but Jennifer's parents discouraged her from watching TV, and her later enrolment in a Waldorf school meant that that restriction was reinforced.

Still, television was in her blood, and when her older half-brother John Melick babysat her, he would sneak in episodes of The Bionic Woman on VHS.

"She'd make that ba-na-na-na-na sound effect around the house, running around directing herself in scenes from the show," Melick told PEOPLE Magazine in a 1997 interview. "I guess she was destined for television."

Studying at the Waldorf school meant that she was exposed to a lot of extracurricular activities: at age 11, Aniston discovered acting.

Still, Jen's time at school wasn't all fun: “I was one of those kids who got sort of bullied, and I don’t know why,” Aniston said in a 2018 interview for InStyle.

"I was one of the kids who the others would decide to make fun of. It was an odd period of time during fifth, sixth, seventh grades. I was a little on the chubby side, so I was just that kid.”

When she was 12, Aniston enrolled in the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, where she joined the school's drama society and participated in several large-scale school plays - learning alongside Cher's son, Chaz Bono - and graduated in 1987.

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When she finished school, Jen set out to make it as an actress - but despite her family connections and the excellent training, she still had a long way ahead of her.

Fresh out of high school, the young Aniston launched herself at New York's acting scene with everything she had - but while she did get parts in a few off-Broadway productions, she still had to work all sorts of odd jobs to support herself - with telemarketer, a waitress and a bike messenger among them.

In 1989, Aniston worked as a spokesmodel for a weight loss company, and had her first interview on national radio at the Howard Stern Show, where the famous host flirted with her over the airwaves.

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"She's gorgeous!" Stern commented in his typical style, and the young Aniston protested: "My mother's listening to this, please!"

Aniston was cast in her first TV role in 1990 in a short-lived series named Molly opposite a very young Mayim Bialik, as well as in a TV adaptation of Ferris Bueller's Day Off - but both shows were cancelled almost as soon as they aired.

In 1993, Aniston was cast in a horror movie: Leprechaun.

The film was a major flop, but more importantly, Jen's experience during filming was so unpleasant that she nearly considered quitting acting for good.

Jennifer Aniston in Leprechaun (1993)

A chance encounter a few months later, however, would change that forever.

Jen was frustrated. Every show she appeared on got cancelled, her experience filming Leprechaun was horrible, and it seemed like her career was at a standstill.

Then, one night, Jen was topping up her gas tank when Warren Littlefield, the head of NBC Entertainment, pulled up to a pump next to hers. Littlefield was responsible for television hits like Frasier, Seinfeld and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and knew Aniston from her roles in failed TV shows.

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"It's 10:30 p.m. at night on Sunset Boulevard, I’m at the Chevron station gassing up and Jennifer is over at the other island and she comes over and she says, ‘Is it ever going to happen?’ and I say, 'We believe in you, I love you, I so believe in your talent, I’m sure it will.’ A few months later, we handed her the 'Friends' script."