Jennifer Aniston on being child-free: ‘You have no clue what's going with me'

The ‘Friends’ actress got candid about her life at 52, and the different standards men and women are held to

The motherhood status of Jennifer Aniston started making headlines when she married Brad Pitt in July 2000. EPA

Jennifer Aniston has given her most candid interview yet, touching on the pregnancy rumours which have followed her for most of her career.

The motherhood status of the Friends actress started making headlines when she married Brad Pitt in July 2000. The pair were married for five years, announcing their separation on January 7, 2005.

Pitt went on to marry actress Angelina Jolie, and the pair have six children together, a fact which shone the spotlight more intensely on Aniston’s child-free life.

“I used to take it all very personally – the pregnancy rumours and the whole ‘Oh, she chose career over kids’ assumption',” she told The Hollywood Reporter magazine. “It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t … can I have kids?’ They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”

‘Am I going to be the miracle mother at 52?’

Jennifer Aniston has been married twice, to actors Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux. Getty Images

The actress, who stars on Apple TV’s The Morning Show opposite long-time friend, Reese Witherspoon, also discussed experiencing fame in the 90s during the heyday of celebrity blogger Perez Hilton and website TMZ.com.

“What the tabloids and the media did to people’s personal lives back then, regular people are doing now,” she said. “Although I haven’t seen a tabloid in so long. Am I still having twins? Am I going to be the miracle mother at 52?

"Now you’ve got social media. It’s almost like the media handed over the sword to any Joe Schmo sitting behind a computer screen to be a troll or whatever they call them and bully people in comment sections.”

The actress, who broke the record for the fastest person to achieve a million followers when she joined Instagram in 2019, however said she was "losing touch".

"I’m not great at going: ‘I’m going to stay relevant and join TikTok’”, she said.

Calling out gender double standards

The actress has often spoken about the societal double standards men and women are held to when it comes to ageing, marriage, career and relationships.

“We live in a society that messages women: 'By this age, you should be married; by this age, you should have children,'” she told Elle magazine. “That’s a fairy tale.”

After her split from Pitt, she also told Vanity Fair in 2006: "A man divorcing would never be accused of choosing career over children.”

Her second marriage to The Leftovers actor Justin Theroux ended in 2017 after six years together, two of which were spent married, but the pair remain friends.

“Men can be married as many times as they want to, they can marry [younger] women in their 20s or 30s," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "Women aren’t allowed to do that."