Jennifer Aniston makes carefully timed comedy sound conversational. We rate her warmth and wit, though lightweight romantic leads have not always given her enough to do; her dramatic television work gives those skills a harder test.
Fi1m perspective
Jennifer Aniston can deliver a witty line without making the conversation seem to stop for it. That is a useful skill in an ensemble, and we like the care behind her apparent ease. Rachel Green in Friends (1994–2004) made her a television star and established the approachable comic manner her film work would repeatedly use. The move into leading comedies in the 2000s was understandable. The difficulty was finding parts that asked for more than a familiar, likeable presence.
Office Space (1999) used her timing in the supporting part of Joanna, while Bruce Almighty (2003) broadened her film profile as Grace Connelly. There is a fair criticism of this stretch: the lighter romantic comedies could give her too little to work with. Being able to make a character approachable does not mean that approachability should be the character's only job. We would not mistake the limitations of those parts for a failure of comic technique.
Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999) offers a better reason to follow her away from the sitcom. She voices Annie Hughes in a film whose central friendship, between a boy and a robot, is funny, tender and worth worrying about. We were moved because Bird lets that friendship matter without treating his young audience as incapable of taking it seriously. The adults are sometimes too neatly drawn, and our affection for the film does not remove that reservation. We recommend it warmly, though its success tells us more about Bird's handling of the story than about Aniston's comic gifts.
The Morning Show (2019–) gives her a more demanding use for the timing learnt in comedy. As Alex Levy, she plays professional and personal pressure in a leading dramatic role, and she also serves as executive producer. Reese Witherspoon is a co-star and producing partner. The interest is in seeing Aniston's comic precision applied to emotional strain and moral conflict, with something more difficult to convey than being good company. For anyone who knows only Rachel Green, it is the next performance to try.
Biography
Jennifer Aniston is an American actress. She was born on 11 February 1969 in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow. She trained at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York.
Aniston rose to prominence playing Rachel Green in the television series Friends (1994–2004), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her film roles include Joanna in Office Space (1999), the voice of Annie Hughes in The Iron Giant (1999), Grace Connelly in Bruce Almighty (2003), and later parts in Horrible Bosses (2011), We're the Millers (2013) and Murder Mystery (2019).
She has also produced work through Echo Films, the company she co-founded, and starred in the series The Morning Show (2019–). Aniston received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
