Jennifer Aniston Opened Up About Struggling to Get Pregnant

The 53-year-old actress shared some of her experience in a new interview.

Jennifer Aniston opened up about her struggle to get pregnant in her new cover story for Allure.

"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 the magazine. "That’s why I have such gratitude for all those shitty things. Otherwise, I would’ve been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were," she continued. "And now, I don't fucking care."

Elaborating further, Aniston revealed something that many (often unkindly) have speculated about for years. "I was trying to get pregnant," said Aniston. "It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road."

Aniston tried all kinds of methods to help her get pregnant with no success, she shared. "I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it," said the actress. "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."

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Despite it all, she has "zero regrets" about what she's been through. "I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, 'Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe,'" she explained. "I don’t have to think about that anymore."

Of course, in addition to the pain of not being able to have a baby like she desired, Aniston was also dealing with the public discourse around her personal life. There was a "narrative that I was just selfish," she told Allure. "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."

Her frustration culminated in a 2016 op-ed for The Huffington Post, in which Aniston spoke out against the media's treatment of her and other women in the public eye. "For the record, I am not pregnant," she wrote at the time. "What I am is fed up. I’m fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of 'journalism,' the 'First Amendment' and 'celebrity news.'"

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"I got so frustrated," said Aniston in the recent cover story. "I was like, 'I’ve just got to write this because it’s so maddening and I’m not superhuman to the point where I can’t let it penetrate and hurt.'"

Aniston used an essay to express herself in part due to her previous absence on social media. Though she's since joined Instagram, she isn't a fan of the medium, she told Allure. "I hate social media," she said, admitting the only reason she created an account was to launch her hair-care line LolaVie.

"I’m really happy that we got to experience growing up, being a teenager, being in our 20s without this social media aspect," she said. "Look, the internet, great intentions, right? Connect people socially, social networking. It goes back to how young girls feel about themselves, compare and despair," explained Aniston.

Now, she's focused on feeling good exactly where she is. "I feel the best in who I am today, better than I ever did in my 20s or 30s even, or my mid-40s," said Aniston. And to her future self, she had something to say: "You're going to be 65 one day and think, I looked fucking great at 53."