Jennifer Aniston Is ‘Ready to Tell All’ in a Memoir After Years of Heartache: ‘Nothing Is Off Limits’

For the longest time, Jennifer Aniston had no plans to share her life story. “Nope. I’m still living it,” she said in 2021 when asked if she’d ever work on a memoir, like her character on The Morning Show. 

Just a year later, she was more open to the concept. “I’m going to do that one day,” she said of writing about her private journey. “I’m going to stop saying, ‘I can’t write’”

That day is now. After years of staying silent on wide-ranging rumors about why her marriage to Brad Pitt really failed, how much plastic surgery she’s had, and the real reason she hasn’t started a family yet, “Jen is finally ready to tell all,” says a source, adding that the actress was inspired by fans and her late Friends costar Matthew Perry’s own memoir. “She realized life is short, so why not do it now?” 

And Jen, who has practiced daily gratitude journaling for years, “is going to do it right — nothing is off-limits,” reveals the source, who has had a first look at an early manuscript. “It’s secrets she’s never told.’”

Jennifer Aniston Will Tell-All About Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Of course, the biggest one concerns Brad — and, by extension, Angelina Jolie. “Jen knows people want to hear all about her love affair with Brad and the truth about their divorce, especially since Brad and Angelina have now split and Jen and Brad have reconnected,” the source says of the pair, who wed in 2000 and announced their separation in 2005 shortly before Brad’s romance with his Mr. & Mrs. Smith costar, 48, was made public. 

At the time, Jen, 55, admitted the quick rebound “shocked” her as much as the rest of the world. “I’d be a robot if I said I didn’t feel moments of anger, of hurt, of embarrassment,” she confessed, famously suggesting that when it comes to Brad, 60, there was “a sensitivity chip that’s missing.”

But with time, the wounds started to heal. “It’s so vague at this point. It’s so far away in my mind, I can’t even remember the darkness,” she insisted in 2008. “I don’t regret any of it. It was a beautiful, complicated relationship.”

In 2020, their friendly run-in at the SAG Awards made major headlines. “Brad and I are buddies,” she explained. “Like, we’re friends and we speak.”

How did they get to this point? “Jen has had a lot of therapy to make peace with her failed marriage to Brad and other romances that didn’t work out,” says the source. “But there is so much more to the story, especially about why they never had a child together.” 

Jen has said her desperate attempt to become a mother is one of the reasons she wants to write a book. “I’ve spent so many years protecting my story about IVF because there’s so little I get to keep to myself,” says Jen. She insists her marriage to Brad did not end because she couldn’t have a baby, and clarifies that her IVF journey actually began after their split, during her late 30s and 40s. “The [world] creates narratives that aren’t true, so I might as well tell the truth. I don’t have anything to hide.”

Jennifer Aniston Will Share Her Plastic Surgery Journey

The reason she never adopted kids, as her good friend Sandra Bullock did, might surprise people. “After so much heartache, Jen has realized that she doesn’t need to have a child of her own to feel complete any more than she needs a man to feel complete,” says the source. “But she’s learned to never say never.”

She’s been open about embracing years of therapy, meditation and various forms of introspection, stemming from her instability as a child following her parents’ divorce. “There were feelings of emotional abandonment from her parents that affected her for a long time,” a source says of Jen, who has also said that her late mother, Nancy Dow, was “very critical” of her appearance, which left “deep wounds that I would then spend a lot of money to undo.”

The actress, who has revealed she had a nose job and has tried “injections,” will “write about plastic surgery and her path to self acceptance, as well,” adds the source. “She’s learned some valuable lessons and wants to share them.

Jennifer Aniston’s Happy Ending

The main theme of her book? How she’s not only survived, but thrived, for almost 30 years under an intense spotlight. “She’ll obviously write about skyrocketing to fame on Friends and how she’s managed a few feuds with other celebrities over the years,” says the source. “But her secret to staying sane through all of her ups and downs is that she surrounds herself with a tight circle of ride-or-die friends.”

They are her chosen family. “We always joke that we raised each other, we mothered each other, we sistered each other, we’ve been kids to each other,” Jen has said, adding that she never needed the romanticized version of a “happy ending” with a man. “Why do we want a happy ending? How about just a happy existence?”

That, she’s attained. “Jen has always maintained an optimistic, glass-half-full mentality, and she’s open about working hard on her physical and emotional well-being,” says the source. “That’s why this memoir will be so inspiring to her fans.”