The Anastassakis Family Memory Book

These memories have been collected from various magazine articles, and are all very intimate personal stories about Jennifer, her family, her heritage, and her childhood. Enjoy.

Baby memories...

From her crib, Jennifer would rip the sunflower wallpaper off the wall. She would see how big a piece she could peel off in one rip. She was never told not to do it, so the sunflower stripping got bigger and bigger. Jennifer claims today that this was because she hates wallpaper, and prefers paint...

The very first thing Jennifer remembers is crawling across her parents' dining-room floor in California, over fake-white-brick vinyl tiling. Just crawling. Jennifer only remembers trying to get somewhere...

Childhood memories

When Jennifer Aniston was very young, she shared her room with a village of people. And even though--- to be honest--- those people were not readily apparent to the naked eye, she would speak to them and laugh with them. And look after them. One time when her godmother walked into the room, Jennifer started crying, saying that her godmother had killed all the little people by stepping on them. Chastened, her godmother retreated to the kitchen. Strangely, Jennifer remembers nothing of this, but her mother has told her about it. Jennifer supposes that she had to forget all about her imaginary friends so that she could join the real world...

Jennifer had a couple of dolls, growing up. One was a Barbie head with hair you could brush and a face you could put make-up on. The other was a Cher doll. Out of shoeboxes she made homes for the bodiless Barbie and Cher: "I’d create a whole apartment complex from shoeboxes, and toilet paper for curtains. The Cher doll was a tall doll--- thank God my dad had big feet." Jennifer didn’t really know who Cher was, but she loved that the doll had long black hair; and she adored Cher’s high-heeled shoes. ‘I was obsessed with high heels when I was little,’ she says.As a famous adult, she has met Cher. But she has never mentioned the doll. ‘I think there are some things that are just better left unsaid,’ she says wisely.

When Jennifer was young, too young to be scared and careful, she was riding her tricycle around the swimming pool. Her 4-year-old’s judgment failed her. ‘Just bad gauging,’ she recalls. ‘I mis-gauged it.’ And in she went, the weight of the bike pulling her under. In followed Dimitri, her white poodle—not, it seems, it save her but just to join in. Luckily, her half-brother, Johnny, was nearby. Her knew what had to be done. He jumped in, carefully grabbed the object of his rescue mission and safely lifted Dimitri out of the water…

Family memories

Jennifer’s father, John, is of Greek descent. He was born in America, but his father came from Greece to America and ran a diner. The story she has always told in interviews (the story was told by her mother) is that her grandfather, who needed to find an easier, more user-friendly American version of their Greek family name, Anastassakis, drove through Anniston, Ala., and decided that Anniston, modified a little to make the name more individual, would do perfectly well. But a year and a half ago her father phoned her and asking where she’d gotten this silly story. And now she doesn’t know how they got the name, though she knows that there is only one other Aniston family in the country and they are related. It is a totally made-up name. ‘I’m not real!’ she says. ‘Jesus! She’s not real!’

The Aniston family moved from Los Angeles to Eddystone, PA., just outside Philadelphia, for six months, where her father’s Greek relatives lived. The family was preparing for a move to Greece. Her father had decided to give up acting, to become a doctor. He couldn’t get into medical schools in America—he was too old—so they went to Athens. Jennifer was five. While living in Athens, she began to speak Greek, though most of it is gone now. ‘For the most part, it’s just staring at a bunch of mouths moving.’ Anyway, after a year, her father’s American agent told him that there was a part on a soap opera. He came back, for good. He was on day-time television for years.

Jennifer’s godfather was Telly Savalas. Kojak. He had been the best man at her parents’ wedding. He would --- and in this he was riding a little too close to the pool’s edge of self-parody --- give her lollipops. He also gave her a pink bike. A big pink banana seat,' she says. “It was cool.”