Jennifer Aniston, 52, believes the reason she never crumbled or had a public breakdown was down to her childhood and turbulent relationship with her mother, Nancy Dow.
The actress rose to fame in the 1990s after she was cast as Rachel Green on the popular US sitcom Friends, but with the instant fame came tabloid pressure.
“[There] are just so many evolved, positive people around me,” she beamed.
“I also grew up watching someone [her late mother] sit comfortably in victimhood, and I didn’t like how it looked. I knew that this person was giving me an example of what I’d never want to be, and I will never ever be that.”
Nancy, who died in 2016 at the age of 79 after suffering two strokes in 2011 and 2012, was a model and actress who starred in TV shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies and The Wild Wild West.
The pair drifted apart in the 1990s and apparently didn’t speak for a decade.
They reportedly only reconnected after Jennifer split from Brad Pitt in 2005.
But the Horrible Bosses star went on to admit their relationship at times was “toxic”, stating that victimhood “erodes your insides and your soul”.
However, she admitted: “Is it a sliver of an annoyance to have to publicly go through dark s**t in front of the world?” she questioned rhetorically. Yes, it’s an inconvenience, but it’s all relative.
“So, I had a choice to make: either I’m going to surrender into bonbons and live under my covers or I’m going to go out there and find a creative outlet and thrive, and that’s what I did. It just happened to be with a movie called The Break-Up!” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
