For Jennifer Aniston, it’s all about the polish. She has virtually made a career out of being a middle-aged woman who glows like a teenager.
And so, as you might expect, her highly paid team is now doing its best to airbrush her brief, doomed marriage to actor Justin Theroux out of existence, and allow her to exit with as much dignity intact as possible.
The couple announced on Thursday night that they are separating. ‘This decision was mutual and lovingly made at the end of last year,’ said a statement.
‘We are two best friends who have decided to part ways as a couple, but look forward to continuing our cherished friendship.’
It is a very inconvenient fact that Aniston — famously dumped by first husband Brad Pitt after he fell in love with Angelina Jolie — is getting divorced again and thus perpetuating the ‘poor Jen’ stereotype.
I’m told that those headlines drive her to fits of shrieking fury.
Heartbreak: Jennifer and Brad Pitt, who left her for Angelina Jolie in 2005
The statement about their split was issued in haste after denials in recent weeks that the marriage was floundering.
They made the decision to split after a make-or-break holiday in December in Mexico, but it seems they would have been content for the fiction of romantic contentment to continue — were it not for gossip of Theroux’s behaviour at a celebrity party in New York last month.
There are suggestions that Theroux was behaving ‘like a very single man’ at a post-Grammys bash. Some even suggest he was kissing another woman — ‘cherished friendship’ with Aniston notwithstanding.
The rumours explain the stern words in their statement, drafted by their PR, no doubt straining every nerve to squash that ‘Poor Jen’ narrative.
‘Given that the gossip industry cannot resist an opportunity to speculate and invent, we wanted to convey the truth directly . . . Above all, we are determined to maintain the deep respect and love that we have for one another.’
In plain English: no one dares say that Jen’s been dumped again.
What is to follow will be a bloodless divorce. Sources indicate that before they married in August 2015, Theroux was required to sign a pre-nuptial agreement.
The negotiations, aimed at protecting Aniston’s £147 million fortune, went on for months.
In truth, you would always have had to be an optimist to count on the success of a union between Theroux, 46, an arty, motorbike-loving New Yorker and Jennifer Aniston, 49, a middle-aged superstar with masses of baggage.
As we shall see, Theroux openly deplores the mainstream culture which made his wife rich. He once sneered: ‘If I was roped into a seven-year TV contract, I’d probably hang myself.’
Aniston, of course, earned her fortune on the TV show Friends over the course of a decade.
The son of a corporate lawyer and Washington Post writer, Theroux was persuaded into marriage much against his instincts, having said for years that he wasn’t the marrying kind
During their relationship, he steadfastly refused to tone down his unconventional lifestyle and recently posted a picture of himself hanging out with the heavily tattooed rapper Wiz Khalifa, who was quite obviously smoking a large marijuana joint.
After their marriage, rumours of dalliances with co-stars followed, always swiftly denied.
There were near constant separations due to work, with his HBO TV project The Leftovers being filmed in New York while his wife made movies in Hollywood.
He and Jennifer had got together after making the film Wanderlust together in 2010. He dumped his live-in girlfriend, costume designer Heidi Bivens in mid-2011 and took up with Aniston.
He proposed in August 2012 on his 41st birthday, and they married exactly three years later.
Jennifer’s post-Brad romances with actor Vince Vaughn and musician John Mayer had been disasters, but she described Theroux as the ‘nicest person in the world’. This may have been evidence of some serious romantic optimism.
A highly intelligent but unusual man, Theroux collects, for instance, both human and animal teeth.
Some of this grisly collection were housed ‘in a candy dish’ at his New York home — a gruesome surprise for the unwary visitor.
In pride of place in his apartment are two pictures: one of girl disfigured by syphilis; another of two toddlers playing with a syringe.
They are a kind of monument to ghastly gothic-tinged bad taste and an immature sense of humour which you might think actively unpleasant.
Jennifer remarked: ‘I remember thinking he was very dark. At first you think he could be like a serial killer.’ She chose, though, to see him instead as ‘quirky and hip’, and indeed, his scripts for box-office hits Tropic Thunder and Iron Man 2 have showcased undoubted talent.
Split: Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux
The arrival of Aniston in his life certainly changed it. The respected columnist Jeanette Charlton reported early on in the romance that the pair had taken a private jet to Hawaii, with Aniston picking up the bill. ‘Justin can’t keep up with Jennifer’s limousine lifestyle, so she’s pretty much paying for everything,’ she said.
Justin, more at home in hipster New York hangouts, was suddenly by her side at the Sunset Tower hotel in LA, where they mix a low-calorie Martini especially for her.
Theroux tried to fit in. He shaved off his beard, tidied up his beetling brows and developed an apparent weakness for a spray tan.
Theroux was also reliably there for Jennifer’s red carpet events. He was fully behind her when she released a furious open letter in 2016 after speculation raged that she might be pregnant.
He said: ‘I was very, very proud of her for writing that. She expressed herself beautifully.’
Just before they got engaged, Jennifer spent £14 million on a new home in Los Angeles, complete with a vineyard, and £6 million on two connecting apartments in New York’s Greenwich Village.
She says she’s never been able to settle in New York because of the media attention, but she loved their Bel Air mansion.
Bizarrely, she told Architectural Digest, in an interview published last week, that she doesn’t like to work as much any more. ‘I look at my husband and my dogs and our home, and there’s nowhere else I want to be,’ she said. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.
Theroux and Aniston bought chickens for their Bel Air garden, and he said: ‘You get beautiful fresh eggs every morning. We both walk down there to collect the eggs. It’s a joint effort.’
But clearly there wasn’t enough ‘joint effort’ to sustain a marriage.
Their break-up was very much a re-run of her final days with Brad Pitt — one last holiday before declaring it over.
Aniston and Theroux went to their usual holiday resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with mutual friends Jason Bateman and his wife, Amanda Anka.
US Weekly said: ‘Amanda has been the mediator, trying to get Jen and Justin to save their marriage. It didn’t work.’
Now, the internet is alight with suggestions that Jennifer and Brad Pitt might reconnect — after all his marriage to Angelina Jolie is over.
But no one who knows how deeply Brad hurt Aniston and how long it took her to rebuild her life after their 2005 divorce thinks that this is even remotely possible.
A source says: ‘There is no way back there. She will be fine without Justin, and she doesn’t need Brad Pitt, either.’