Jennifer Aniston reveals she tried IVF: ‘I have zero regrets’

At 53 years old, American actress Jennifer Aniston has nothing to hide. That’s what she told Allure magazine in an interview, where she revealed for the first time that she tried to get pregnant via IVF. The actress, best known for playing Rachel Green in the hit TV show Friends, said she underwent the procedure at a time when the media was constantly reporting rumors that she was pregnant.

“All the years and years and years of speculation... It was really hard,” she said, in reference to the pregnancy rumors. “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”

“I have zero regrets,” added Aniston, who now stars in The Morning Show. “I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore.”

Anderson, who was married to Brad Pitt between 2000 and 2005, and to Justin Theroux, between 2015 and 2017, did not specify when she tried IVF. In the interview, the actress talked about how, during her marriage to Pitt, she was accused of choosing her career over family. “[The] narrative that I was just selfish,” she said. “I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”

Although she gets along well with her two ex-husbands, Anderson admitted that she has no interest in remarrying. “I’d love a relationship. Who knows? There are moments I want to just crawl up in a ball and say, ‘I need support.’ It would be wonderful to come home and fall into somebody’s arms and say, ‘That was a tough day,’” she said.

Anderson spoke about her dislike of social media, which she described as “torture,” and explained that she only joined Instagram to promote her hair-care line, LolaVie. The Hollywood star also talked about the importance of resisting social pressures to look young. “I feel the best in who I am today, better than I ever did in my 20s or 30s even, or my mid-40s. We needed to stop saying bad shit to ourselves,” she said, scolding her future self: “You’re going to be 65 one day and think, I looked fucking great at 53.”

Although it has taken years for Aniston to publicly talk about her experience with IVF, she said she plans to write about it “one day.” “I’ve spent so many years protecting my story about IVF. I’m so protective of these parts because I feel like there’s so little that I get to keep to myself. The [world] creates narratives that aren’t true, so I might as well tell the truth. I feel like I’m coming out of hibernation. I don’t have anything to hide,” she said.

Back in 2016, the actress penned an op-ed in The Huffington Post, in which she shared her frustration about the ongoing media speculation about her personal life. “For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up,” she wrote. That same year, she spoke to Marie Claire about why she decided to write the op-ed. “My marital status has been shamed; my divorce status was shamed; my lack of a mate had been shamed; my nipples have been shamed. It’s like, Why are we only looking at women through this particular lens of picking us apart?” she said.

But Aniston said these experiences, while difficult, were formative. “I would say my late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard shit, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be,” she told Allure.