[from Elle, 2/00]

There were tears, hugs, breast milk, hysterical laughter, three beautiful girls and a geometrically perfect arc of baby pee that almost, but not quite, brought about a terrible accident with a pair of lavishly jewelled D & G trousers...

Elle's cover shoot with Jennifer Aniston has all the ingredients of a perfect Friends episode, only no one was acting. Readers, we bring you... 'The One Where Jennifer Introduces Her Real Friends'

Cast: Jennifer Aniston (played by herself); Andrea Bendewald, 29, actress: Jen's high school bud (far left); Kristin Hahn, 31, documentary maker and writer: Jen's first true LA bud (near left); and introducing: baby Boden Samuel Springer, aged seven weeks.

Scene: A photographic studio in Hollywood, Los Angeles (In an adjacent studio, a Helmut Newton fashion shoot is taking place; here and there, elegantly wasted, mean looking models smoke petulantly which would, of course, be totally unremarkable if it did not contrast so vividly with the girlishly emotional, daytime slumber party for thirtysomethings, which is about to erupt. Rachel, the honey-blonde Friend. The most celebrated Barnet of the late 20th Century. The loved up real life girlfriend of Brad Pitt. Girl Icon. Official.

Only today Jennifer Aniston is off duty and, really, she's just a tiny, nut-brown slip of a thing, so dainty and skittishly excitable that she seems more like a pretty woodland fawn that's wandered in from the hills than a smugbug soap diva. She's dressed in a tomato tank top, hip skimming black sweats and her hair (not perfectly ironed nor perfectly flippy) is swept into a bunch. Hardly princess Rachel. For the shoot today she's invited along two of her oldest friends (Hollywood oxymoron alert! Here, you make a dozen new best friends just crossing a room): Andrea Bendewald, her high school buddy, and Kristin Hahn, who she met in her resting actress/McJob days in Los Angeles. Kristin flew in this morning from Washington State with her husband Charlie and their seven-week-old son, Boden. Jennifer hasn't seen the new baby and when they meet in the lobby (much squealing and dancing on the spot and that's just Jennifer), she takes Boden into her arms and begins to cry.

'Jen really loves babies. She's a real softie for them,' says Kristin, while Charlie, dangling a temporarily redundant baby sling around his neck beams widely. Jennifer's friendship with Andrea was forged at the High School of Performing Arts (Fame! I want to live forever etc.) in New York, where Jennifer, an LA babe by birth, moved after the 1978 divorce of her parents: John, (an actor famous for his role on Days of Our Lives) and Nancy (who modelled and acted, and, more recently, has been stirring up trouble big time for her daughter with her book 'From Mother and Daughter to Friends') 'We took acting very seriously. Acting, studying and boys', says Andrea. 'Also, both our parents divorced when we were young, so we understood the pain of separated families, the back and forth of it all.'

Jennifer, who sticks to her friends like Velcro, remembers that, even at school, 'I was the talker of the group and somehow I got the role of therapist among my friends. Who knows if that comes from being in a family where the parents were more like children than you were?' she shrugs, and her pale blue eyes mist over. 'You kind of want to take care of everyone, which can be a bad thing, trying to be a saviour for everyone. You kind of miss out on letting them take care of you.' Kristin came into Jennifer's orbit a little later, when Aniston the aspiring actress left New York, waiting on tables and bad auditions to chance her luck in Los Angeles. Of course, I envisage Jennifer's LA debut as one delicious whirl of pastel beach clothes, rides in Penelope Pitstop convertibles and crayzee Boogie nights pool parties. In fact, she set up home in an artsy low rent, communal housing project in Laurel Canyon. ("Whenever the inspector came round, we had to pull out our stoves and hide them"). 'I had a little apartment in Laurel Canyon about the size of a bathroom,' remembers Kristen. 'And one night Jen came hopping down my stairs. I was taking something out of the oven, I turned round and there she was. She had that sweet glow about her. She just oozed love and she still does. We became instantly crazy about each other and spent every day together for the next few years.'

Kristin had a job at Paramount as an assistant to a producer on 'Cheers' (so in those days, she was the one who bought lunch). 'Jen would come and hang out with me during the day, lie on my couch, and talk about how she was never going to work. I think the wonderful thing about Jen is that she didn't become well known and then suddenly adopt another lot of friends who are fabulous. She's kept the things she's had since she was 19. Not just Andrea and I, but a bunch of us. And that's why she can't change, because we'd all know'. Life at Laurel Canyon, or The Hill, as Jen and co. liked to call it, would have translated well into a long running sitcom, although something possibly a little more left field and less perfectly groomed than Friends. The Hill people barbecued together on Sundays and did road trips. 'Eight of us shacked up in one hotel room in Santa Barbara for three days,' shrieks Kristin. 'Our friend Michael Sanville, a photographer, would always come up with ideas for crazy shoots, mostly based around some ploy to get us naked'. On Jennifer's 22nd birthday, she walked into her own party on the Hill only to discover that her buddies had pasted head shots of her then crush on every surface. 'Even inside the fridge. It was so silly and so embarrassing.

When the stresses and strains of the city of dreams became too tough to bear, the female members of the Hill posse would organise a girls night out. 'The rule was that you are not allowed to talk to men; it was all about women worshipping each other- dancing, drinking and having a blast,' says Kristin, the most obvious feminist of the bunch. Still, she was the one who broke the rules when she brought a certain Matthew Perry (a drinking buddy from nights, downing shots in dodgy Hollywood sake joints) back to the Hill. 'And our dog at the time, named Brad, bit him on the ass as he was going upstairs.' And when, in 1994, Jennifer finally got the acting break she was aching for - a plum role in a new sitcom about six coffee-sipping, flat-sharing unattached New Yorkers. 'It just felt really natural to me. A show about six people who hang out all the time. That makes perfect sense.' In the dressing room, Kristin and Andrea are comparing wench blouses and singing the joys of Jennifer's legendary closet clear outs.

'When the show hit, none of us saw a lot of Jen', admits Kristin. 'For about a year and a half, she was so engulfed in the Beatles-like phenomenon that was Friends. There was definitely some jealousy on the part of the old friends. Here she was in a show called 'Friends' and we were her real ones. There was a period where we were hanging out, waiting for her to come out to the other side. And she did. 'These days, Jennifer may no longer live on the Hill (home is a swishy 50's maisonette high in the Hollywood hills), but she manages to mingle her 'Friends' friends ('Courteney and Lisa, those are going to be the girls I'll know forever') with her old muckers. Not that hard: Kristen already knew Matthew Perry (Brad, bottom biting) and long, long ago, before the most successful sitcom in television history was even a twinkle in the producers eyes, she directed a play with Lisa Kudrow in it. Andreas also acted on stage with David Schwimmer. 'Its just worked out' says Jennifer.

Watching Jennifer today with her old friends - two blondes and a brunette, 21st Century 'Charlies Angels', three Graces fussing over each others makeup - I'm very curious to know which friend fits 'Friends' archetype; although beyond the general consensus thats Kristin's a bit of a Monica, no one will really say. 'Kristin's the revolutionary pioneer woman,' says Jennifer. 'Andrea is mom; I mean, Kris is literally mom, but Andrea really is mom. I don't know what the hell I am. I'm kind of the carefree child that gets spanked once in a while. The one that gets wrangled in.

Lunch. Andrea has shrugged a big shapeless orange anorak over her sequinned vest and is goofing around telling stories. Jennifer is shovelling down salad and Kristen settles down to breast feed Boden and chat a while about the deep strangeness that is fame. 'I think Jen's happier than she's ever been. She's really finding ways of being in the world publicly and also finding ways to hide. That not to say it isn't really painful when people say shes anorexic, when I know, because I'm with her all the time - that she's healthier now than she's ever been. She's got a great relationship with food. Stories about Jennifer being a bad role model for young girls... It's a bummer that they had to happen but I think, for the most part, she's been able to rise above it.'

Now, you may have noticed that, throughout all these tales of sisterly loveliness, theres not been much boy talk. (In fact, bar the Brad madness and a broken engagement to Tate Donovan, relatively little juice has been spilled about Jennifer's love life. 'That's always been incredibly hard for us, always' says Kristin, 'because we've all been incredibly critical about men being worthy. All the men we dated had to go through an intense scrutiny process and I wouldn't have wanted to be any of them. They would walk into a room, it would all fall silent and you could just feel the stare.'

'Oh my God, we were hard, very hard,' squeals Jennifer, 'and then, usually when there was a break-up, we'd get to unload. "I never liked him! Ever! I'm glad he's gone!"' 'But' confesses Kristin, 'an interesting thing happened. We met all the partners we're with now separately from each other and we kept them from each other. We developed all these relationships in isolation. It showed that we'd all grown up and relationships had to mature. And its fascinating because we are all with very steady partners.' Kristin, who met Charlie at a funeral 3 years ago, married him last September; Andrea has just celebrated her first anniversary with actor Mitch Rouse, whose ex-wife played in the TV show 'The Secret Lives of Men'. And as for Jennifer Aniston's famously discreet courtship with Bradley Pitt? (The teasing glimpse at the Tibetan Freedom concert, pitching up to premiers in different cars, leaving by separate exits...) 'Jen kept this relationship very private, got very comfortable with it and made her own decisions about it,' continues Kristin. 'It used to be, "I've met this new guy. Come and meet him and tell me what you think." Bad girl stuff. That's why I think the three relationships we are in are the ones. We didn't ask permission to be in them.' And while I'm sure there ain't a sentient heterosexual woman alive who wouldn't grant their best friend permission to snog Brad Pitt, I'm fascinated to know how Jen introduced her beloved to The Hill people. 'Oh, it was another little Sunday night dinner,' Jennifer says lightly, like I'd just asked her how she mixes salad dressing. 'We usually have a Sunday night dinner. They all came over and they all met. It was a pretty instant love fest. It seems like we've all known each other for aeons.'

And with that, she gets up. It's time for baby Bodens nude scene. Something happens when Jennifer, radiant in bejewelled trousers, a Pre-Raphaelite Kristin and Boden, looking like a chubby El Nino in his birthday suit, pose for their portrait. Something rather beautiful. 'Lucky guy,' someone says when Jennifer kisses Boden on his head. As if on cue, he produces a stream of pee which arcs through the air, holding everyone in the studio rapt, before narrowingly missing Jennifer's fabulous glittering trousers. Now, I know the precious nearly doused in baby pee aren't really Jennifer's and I know that, even if they were, she could afford a second pair. Still, there's something unusually graceful about the way Jennifer grabs a towel, dabs Boden dry before cuddling him up to him and Kristin and smiles beautifully for the camera. Later, Charlie tells me that it was on Jennifer's birthday in Mexico (this is a woman who takes her friends up to Acapulco to celebrate her 30th birthday) that Boden was conceived. 'Good margaritas' says Kristin.

Boden needs a little time to recover from his performance, so, while he has a relaxing feed, Kristin tells me about her wedding. How she was seven months pregnant, vulnerable as hell and probably would have worn a 'horrible camouflage tent' had Jennifer not gone into 'Richard Gere in Pretty Woman' mode and brought her a beautiful (large) wedding gown and four pairs of fairy shoes. How on Kristins big day, the friends got stuck in backstage, Andrea steaming the veil, Jennifer doing Kristins makeup. 'She took a good hour and a half, making killer Bloody Mary's all the while. In the end, Jen had five minutes to get ready, she didn't even care what she looked like. The music started and the only way for her and Andrea to get into the church was to come through the front and sneak past the altar.' Its quite a picture, I say, Brad Pitt sitting at a church pew, waiting for his date. 'I'm sure people thought "Double wedding."'

When the last shot of the day is over, Jen flops on the sofa, requests coffee, cigarettes and ashtray, and then, taking a look down at her hands (bare) yells to Andrea out to Andrea to rescue her ring from her jeans pocket (eek!). 'Surreal, wasn't it?' she says, her voice sounding teary, hyper and excited. 'We get very emotional.'

Jennifer calls Kristin, Andrea and her tight knit crew of Laurel Canyon buddies her 'chosen family'. 'With each of us, well especially me, Kristin and Andrea - our families are wonderful, but they definately weren't easy.' The sad irony is that it's these intimate friendship bonds that seem to have pushed Jennifer's own family further away. 'It was hard for them to understand these other people always being there - my mother especially. I know she puts my life down a lot. She didn't understand how special and protective these people were. If only she knew, I think she would have felt less threatened and embraced them.'

As emotions are now running high, it seems only appropriate to ask whether Kristin and Andrea will be bridesmaids when Jennifer gets married. 'When there is ever a wedding, they absolutely will be,' she smiles, in a careful, non-committal kind of way. And baby Boden, has he not sent her hormones into overdrive today? 'People always say, "Doesn't it make you want one??" Well, you always do. You sort of know if you are a person who wants to be a mother. I always did. Today, I was just awed that this was Kristin's baby, holding him in my arms, I just burst into tears. It was a heavy cry too, I wasn't quite sure what was happening. Very wild. Very wild.'

Before weddings, before beautiful Aniston-Pitt babies, Jennifer's next big thing will, she says, be a movie. 'A heavy metal thing', she gushes. 'My heavy metal passion will be coming out. Well, not really heavy metal; I guess it's more my love for Aerosmith.' We chat a little about how hard it is, even for Hollywood's most wanted, to break out of their appointed boxes (her previous movie outings have been rather gooey with relationship fare: 'She's the One', 'Picture Perfect', and 'The Object of my Affection'). You become known as one thing, and all of a sudden, instead of it freeing you artistically, you feel afraid. You forget you are an actor and play many parts. It was so wonderful to see Cameron Diaz in 'Being John Malkovich' (sporting birdnest hair and saggy bottom track pants). You think "Good. This is what actors do. They play many roles." Camerons not just a beautiful girl, she's much, much more.'

Now if anyone knows how to blow apart his blonde bombshell image with hardcore roles in dark, uncompromising movies, its Brad Pitt. 'He loves to, though, he loves to. And he's so good. He's so good at what he does, you just buy it. He's also not afraid for it not to be good,' Jennifer says, smiling, 'which is a wonderful attitude. I admire it so much. Try it, see if it works. If it doesn't, move on.' Brad, she says, gives good advice. 'Always, he is so wise. He is a sweet, wise soul.' And on that note, we take a moment to meditate upon the beauty of partnership. 'Its great when you can be each others sounding board,' says Jennifer. 'Be good for each other instead of being each others punchbag, it's a whole new ball park, for everybody.'

Earlier in the day, I asked Kristin how she envisaged herself, Jennifer and Andrea in 10 years' time. 'Either on a commune together or living nearby, raising our babies. Living tedious, wonderfully normal lives.' Jennifer confesses she's always been wary of this kind of talk and counts her ability to live firmly in the present and not fret about the future as a gift. 'I'm not the one who fantasised about "Where will I live? Who will I marry? Will I have babies?" For the first time I'm really actually seeing those things, having visions and flashes of them.' And? 'Hopefully we'll all be on some beautiful sprawling lawn, swinging on hammocks, watching our children play, up north, near San Francisco, on the coast. I'm getting closer to that point of not wanting to be immersed in Hollywood on a daily basis. I didn't know that I would ever really say this, but I don't know if I could ever raise a child in Los Angeles.' She's not complaining. She's just thinking about the little things in life - walking to the store, cleaner air... 'One of my favourite things is to sit and watch the sunset, take it all in. I'm very happy. Very lucky. You've got to pinch yourself once in a while.' But no, she's not dreaming. Jennifer Aniston, the girl whose real life is better than 'Friends'.