What's Next For Jennifer and Brad
[from the Ladies Home Journal, 7/01]
As they celebrate their first anniversary, Hollywood’s hottest couple prepare for their biggest role ever.
And now, a little game of he/she said. “Happily married! Fat! Kids!” he said. “He loves the idea of having a huge family,” she said. “The planning is under way,” he said, eight months after their $1 million wedding celebration. “I love everything about them,” she said, describing her feelings about babies. “Listen, I’m ready now,” he said. “I want to be a young mother, too,” she said.
Although there might be room for further dialogue, there’s little doubt where Hollywood’s royal couple, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, has stood on the matter of children - even before their wedding took place. “You sort of know if you are a person who wants to be a mother,” Aniston has said. “I always did.”
For his part, Pitt was just as sure: “I believe in the concept of marriage and family, and it’s always been my intention to take this step and build a life with someone.”
So who could be surprised to learn of a beautiful baby looming in the couple’s near future?
The prefect relationship, combined with the perfect time in their lives to have children, makes the prospect of a baby all the more exciting. At 32, Aniston has, in her own words “evolved.” She has clearly come a long way from the confusing 20s to a solid relationship with Pitt, and an established career and considerable peace of mind. “I’m excited to be thirty,” she said shortly after her birthday two years ago. “It feels like an accomplishment… like no more excuses.”
Despite their place at the top of Hollywood’s A-List, this is a couple that sets their priorities when it comes to the delicate balance of family and career. After the Emmys last year and before the big party that followed, the two went to a Los Angeles hospital to visit their friends’ newborn. “We jumped into the car, looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s go to Cedars-Sinai,’” recounted Aniston. “ ‘Let’s go to the hospital before we go to the party, just to get a burst of reality.’ Those award show’s are so surreal – fun but surreal.”
As her friend of many years Kristen Hahn, a bridesmaid at Aniston and Pitt’s wedding, explained, “It’s so easy to get lazy when you have everything at your fingertips. They challenge each other to have real intimacy, as opposed to getting away with what the world allows you to get away with.”
There was chemistry from the instant they met, an electric connection that sizzled on their first date three years ago and has only grown more powerful since. “We’ve felt pretty much like a force from the beginning,” said Aniston recently. That’s not surprising, considering their similarities. Both wanted to be actors; both possessed an artistic streak – he with design and architecture, she as a painter. Both headed for Hollywood to pursue a their dreams, neither knowing the other would be wating there at the end of the rainbow.
At 25, Pitt left Springfield, Missouri, in his beat-up Datsun with $325 in his pocket. His first job after arriving in Los Angeles was foul, dressing up like a chicken to wave customers into Pollo Loco restaurant. Around the same time, in 1989, Aniston, barely 20, fled New York for points west, after attending the renowned School for the Performing Arts. Her goal was as much to escape a difficult childhood (her parents had divorced when she was 9, and she has spoken of her insecurities growing up), as it was to pursue a acting career.
Both Aniston and Pitt floundered for a while upon arriving in Hollywood. After working in commercials and TV Shows, Pitt landed the role of swindling but irresistible cowboy in 1991’s Thelma & Louise. From there, it was right to the top: Legends Of The Fall, Seven, and this year’s hit with Julia Roberts, The Mexican, to name a few. There were relationships along the way, including a very public engagement to Gwyneth Paltrow, which ended with a painful breakup in 1997.
Like her husband, Aniston was, at first, just another poor young actor. For many months. She waited tables and worked as a telemarketer, messenger or receptionist. After a few false starts, in projects like the ho-hum thriller Leprechaun and two short-lived TV shows, Aniston was flatly told by her agent at the time that her success would be contingent upon becoming thinner. Throwing herself into strict regiman of diet and exercise, Aniston lost 30 pounds in a year. Almost instantly she landed the part of Rachel in Friends. Then came feature roles in films like She’s The One and The Object Of My Affection. This fall, she’ll star opposite Mark Wahlberg in Rock Star. (Looking back, with concern about the pressures on teenage girls – including the pressure to be thin – Aniston has volunteered to advise them by way of Web site Voxxy.com. She urges teens to work on their overall well-being, with less concern about outward appearance.)
Aniston, like Pitt, had her share of romances - with Counting Crows lead singer Adam Durvitz and actors Charlie Schlatter and Tate Donovan. She dated Donovan for more than a year, perhaps her most serious involvement until meeting Pitt. But post-Paltrow, post-Donovan, when the two finally met on a dinner date, there was instant and mutual attraction. “It’s great when you can be each other’s sounding board,” she has said.
Since their wedding a year ago this month (July 29), the fusion seems to have grown even stronger. “Married life is fantastic,” Brad said last year, after being voted “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine for the second time. “The thing I was least prepared forwas the pride I have whenever I look across at this woman… We’re pretty much after the same thing, just great respect for each other.” Jason Flemyng, who starred with Pitt in the recent film Snatch and has a part with Aniston in Rock Star, has only praise for his co-stars: “They couldn’t be more generous. There’s no status hierarchy at all.”
Their friends take pleasure in watching the Aniston-Pitt marriage blossom. “Jennifer’s a lot more peaceful now,” said Friends’ co-star Lisa Kudrow recently. “There’s not a lot to say about them because there are no problems. They’re light-years ahead of themselves. You know how your grandparents have a certain perspective about life? They’ve got that now.”
They’ve also been working nonstop. Aniston’s role in Rock Star has started to generate some favorable buzz.
She’s sure to surprise many of her TV fans with her gritty portrayal of the devoted girlfriend of a salesman (Wahlberg) whose life changes when he replaces the lead singer of a popular heavy-metal band. Pitt just finished filming Ocean’s Eleven (with, amoung others, Julia Roberts and George Clooney), in which he plays Dean Martin character. Next comes To The White Sea, a film by The Coen Brothers (Fargo; Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?), in which Pitt portrays a World War II gunner shot down over Tokyo.
Career aside, Pitt maintains that most important consideration for him and Aniston is their marriage. In answer to how he balances acting and his personal life, he recently replied, “We’re pursuing a relationship first.” When they’re on location, they keep in touch by cell phones – and visits to their respective sets. On Valentine’s Day, Aniston arrived at her Friends dressing room to find it overflowing with roses; on the wall Pitt had spelled out – in rose petals – “I love my wife.”
When they’re together, they’re homebodies, seemingly seeking a sense of normalcy. Home life could soon revolve around the Craftsman-style house the couple is restoring in the hills of Hollywood. (Other reports have had them looking to buy one of Los Angeles’ legendary estates.)
Settling into marriage has left Aniston open to the next phase of her life. No doubt her biological clock has been a consideration as she inches toward 35. Time is clearly on her husband’s mind. Three years shy of 40, with his desire for as many as seven kids, Pitt said recently: “Look, I’m in my thirties… I don’t want to waste time.”
Aniston has high hopes for motherhood. “I’d like to be the perfect mom,” she said in an interview, “but someone for whom it’s okay to be flawed.” When asked during an online chat about raising children in the spotlight, she replied, “You have to keep them away from that world… You have to keep their lives very normal.” And, in what seemed like a reference to children in her future, she added: “Being raised with a silver spoon has a lot of downsides. Kids have to realize there are chores and jobs… It’s not all glitz and glamor.”
It’s a sentiment few Hollywood couples seem to understand as keenly as Aniston and Pitt. Staying grounded amid all the challenges of celebrity is a sure prescription for a happy home – for a family of any size.
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