The Friends star turns up the volume to 11 with Rock Star.

by Gayl Murphy

In the fickle world of Hollywood, Jennifer Aniston has been this week's flavor of the month for a couple of years running. "It's got nothing to do with me," she says. "I'm just the vessel." Not quite. Her marriage last year to Brad Pitt may be one big reason she's still in the headlines, but despite her denials, the Friends star has her own staying power.

After a few tentative steps into film, acting mostly in light romantic comedies, Aniston is taking some dramatic risks as a musician's neglected girlfriend in Rock Star. She admits she knows nothing about the rock scene, but at this point in her career, she's ready to prove to audiences and executives alike that she really can act.

When Aniston, wearing hip hugger designer jeans and a purple shirt, chatted with Mr. Showbiz recently, she exhibited a relaxed demeanor that's uncommon for someone who is a daily fixture in the tabloids. Then again, she also referred to Hollywood as a "big, old, fun game," so she doesn't seem to be too stressed out about all the press she gets. She's got the resilience of a high-school cheerleader, the attitude of a prom queen, and the aura of a '60s SoCal flower child. After expressing regret over her infamous comments about sleeping with Steven Tyler, she went on to talk about those ever-present Friends reruns and why she and Brad probably won't work together for another 15 years.

It was pretty bad. It was really bad, actually. Really long, really big, really layered, and bangs that started in the back of my head, you know. It was a lovely purpley-plumb color that I did myself that eventually turned into orange. It was pretty bad.

It's not so bad in the movie.

I made a point to say, "I'm not going to have bad 80s hair." [Laughs] But it wasn't that great, she still had the big bang.

Did you research your role by going to concerts?

No, I can't say that I joined the craziness, nah-ah. I mean, I've seen a couple of shows in my life, but … I didn't do the rock scene very much. [Laughs] It scares me, truthfully.

I never hung out with a band. And I'll tell you, I don't have a favorite.

I love so many different bands and different kinds of music. Aerosmith's always been a favorite. Led Zepplin's always been a favorite. Radiohead's a favorite.

[Laughs] I wish I'd never said it. It was a joke in passing between me and my loved one. I do love Steven Tyler, though. I think he's phenomenal and very, very, very beautiful, but that was all. It's just a very silly little thing that's bitten me in the butt.

We did. See, we made it. Who'd [have] thought?

You just don't feel like it was ever any other way. It's true.

We know of that happening in people's lives where one becomes very famous and the wife or the husband doesn't fit in the picture anymore. But there are also people that can handle it and see what it is and take it for what it is, which is just a big, old, fun game and not real. It's just for the moment, you know?

Hopefully, you have a career that will last a long time, and the work is important. But to get caught up in that sort of hoopla and fame and glamour is pretty silly.

Yeah, for some people it's absolutely real. I don't mean it's not real. It exists and the industry exists, but this idea that it's some glamorous fantastic existence all the time. … It's a nine to five job, you go to get your coffee in the morning, you go to work, you come home, you feed the dog, and you got your pool guy messing up something in the back. You know what I mean?

I guess you choose to live in that scene. We just don't live in that so much.

You always say that you and Brad want to work together. Yet when Brad was connected to Rock Star, you didn't want anything to do with it, but when he dropped out, you signed on.

Yeah, I know, that was weird. They were working on it for a while and then it just went away. Then, about a year later, I got the call from my manager and she said, "Do you remember Metal God?" And I said, "Yeah." They asked how I would feel about playing the girl. And I remember there not being [that] part. And they said that they'll write one, they'll create it. So, it wasn't as if because he dropped out that I came onboard — there was never even a thought of it. It went away for about a year.

Oh it's great. That doesn't happen very often, so it was nice.

Well, that's what we think, truthfully — the amount of media and the microscope we'd be under. I mean, we couldn't just go out and do a movie. It would be people just sitting back waiting [she wrings her hands deviously], you know? So it has to be right and it has to be good. Maybe we will in 15 years because right now there's still such [a] media circus happening.

They'll get bored and move on to somebody else. You know, the next flavor or whatever. I think like anything, there's an ebb and flow and it's something to talk about, and they need to fill their pages with something else.

Rock Star still has you in a supporting role. When are you going to take the lead?

It's too much responsibility. [Laughs]

I think there just hasn't been one that's appealed to me. I've made some choices in the past, and I haven't regretted anything, but maybe I've thought, "God, I wish I'd given that one a little more thought." Or, "If I'd been in this business a little bit longer …." Because you get offered something and you think, "Wow, they're offering it to me?" without any thought of what it is or how it will benefit you. This just happened to be interesting to me and fit in with the time slot and gave me free time at the end of the summer so that I could breath a little bit before going back to Friends.
I'm sorry, but did you just say you actually consider the elements of your real life over you career?

Yeah, the passage of time, the quality of life, it's very important. You know, even just finishing this job I did at the end of Friends that was called The Good Girl, I was pulling double duty again and I was just "eek." As amazing as it was, it was so exhausting, I felt like something was going to suffer. I'm not a workaholic like that. I mean, I admire people that can do that, like George Clooney. George Clooney when he was doing ER and Batman, he was Batman! I don't know how he did it.

It's an independent movie that Miguel Arteta directed. It's a pretty, little, dark slice-of-life movie. I play a good girl working at the retail rodeo in Texas who's pretty much fed up with her life and kind of makes some choices that don't throw her in the greatest situations.

It was one of those things where I had read one more really bad romantic comedy, and I just said, "I'm going to take a chance and do something different. And I might as well do it now and see if I can do it and if I get away with it, and if people will accept it, because I don't want to do this forever. As much as I love that, there's other things I can do and I'm going to have to take that chance and prove it, or not."

You know none of them are Friends really. There are similarities in that they're spoiled rich girls looking for love. That's pretty much the formula for romantic comedies. There are only a certain number of ways you can tell a love story, and it's just finding the writer that will make it interesting.

You have to go in and prove it, audition for them. I don't ever have an ego about auditioning. I don't expect someone to think I can do something that they haven't seen me do yet. I don't know if I can do it. [Laughs] So I kind of feel that you go in and audition and get a job somewhere that can prove that, otherwise, just show a piece of you that they haven't seen before.

That time hasn't come yet. Eventually. Maybe never. There are stories about so and so who's reading and I think, "Really, they're reading?" But for the same reason — directors really need to see them. And then, of course you get up into that tier of Julia Roberts. I don't think she has to do anything but say yes or no. [Laughs] But that's just a different place.

I know, it's like a cult classic. I worked for two weeks on that movie, I was so in and out and had not a clue what I was doing. I just loved Mike Judge, and I just thought it would be a fun, little movie. I wasn't working that summer, and it was two weeks in Austin. It turned into this really hysterical movie — not for anything I did.

No! We didn't know. We shot a phony ending, and then at 2 o'clock in the morning, after they unloaded the audience, they handed us all the pages for the finale. They didn't trust anybody, truthfully, to not give it away. The cast and crew all had to sign confidentially agreements. And I get the script and I go, "Oh my gosh, I'm pregnant!" And then the crew's coming up and congratulating me and I'm like, "I swear to God, guys, I'm not pregnant." And they're all going, "Right, ah-huh, sure you're not." And from then on all the hoopla happened. It was funny, though, made me laugh. I got a lot of free desserts.

I think it's silly. I think it's also funny that the BBC was reporting it. I mean, that's kind of a worthy news outlet. And then my publicist having to call CBS News while they're on-air and say, "Retract that." You know, this is the news, for Christ sakes.

It's the media. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm just the vessel.

I know. It's amazing. And you know, it will happen — but it's kind of all very strange.

Are you looking forward to getting back to work on Friends?

I'm psyched about it. The writers are so on top of it and still everybody's really open and we're collaborative and it's just a good job. I love it.

I know. [Laughs] I apologize for the over saturation.

Yeah.

Good or bad flashbacks?

It's actually hysterical to me. I love the show, I mean that's really corny, but I do. We're flipping through and it's a rerun, we laugh. It's fun.