Jennifer Aniston Was Asked To Lose 30 Pounds Before Landing ‘Friends’ Role, New Book Claims

NBC

Jennifer Aniston has one of the best figures in Hollywood. But a new book claims she was told she had to lose 30 pounds or she’d never get roles, including the one on ‘Friends’ that made her a star.

It’s hard to imagine anyone considering Jennifer Aniston heavy. But before she landed her star-making role on Friends in 1994, her agent allegedly told her she needed to drop 30 pounds or she would never get considered for roles. In a new book that coincides with the 25th anniversary of the show debuting on NBC, Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era, author Saul Austerlitz writes “She had to lose thirty pounds if she wanted to stay in Hollywood. Los Angeles was a tough place to be an actress — it was a tough place to be a woman — and Jennifer Aniston’s agent was reluctantly leveling with her.”

According to Generation Friends, Jen got a callback on an audition where the casting directors asked her to wear a leotard. “This’ll blow it for me,” she joked to her agent, who “responded seriously.” “Aniston was hardly fat — everyone could see she was beautiful — but as the show she would one day become indelibly associated with later made a point of noting, the camera added ten pounds,” Saul writes. Jennifer lost the weight and eventually landed the role of Rachel Green on Friends, which would go on to rule the airwaves from 1994-2004 and make her America’s Sweetheart. Now at age 50, Jen still has one of the most enviable and toned figures in Hollywood.

Jen herself admitted in a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone that her agent told her to lose weight because she wasn’t getting work. “My agent gave it to me straight. Nicest thing he ever did….The disgusting thing of Hollywood — I wasn’t getting lots of jobs ’cause I was too heavy. I was like, ‘What?!’ But my diet was terrible. Milk shakes and French fries with gravy,” she said. ‘”t was a good thing to start paying attention.” She also told the publication, “I ate too many mayonnaise sandwiches. Mayonnaise on white bread –— the most delicious thing in the world.” Whoa, in today’s world no aspiring actress would ever dream of touching carbs like white bread, let alone mayonnaise.