Jennifer Aniston Opens Up About Past Love Triangle with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Jennifer Aniston has rarely spoken about the high-profile “love triangle” with her ex-husband Brad Pitt and his now-ex wife Angelina Jolie, but she opened up in a Vanity Fair profile published Monday. The “Friends” star reflected on the difficult period, saying, “It was … such a vulnerable time. Journalism back then felt more like a form of a sport.”

Aniston, 56, and Pitt, 61, were married from 2000 to 2005. Pitt met Jolie on the set of the 2005 action movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” and the two began a relationship shortly after. Pitt and Jolie were together for over a decade before Jolie filed for divorce in 2016.

Looking back, Aniston described the media frenzy surrounding her breakup with Pitt and the public scrutiny of her personal life. She told Vanity Fair, “There’s obviously some PTSD we all have, which is why these [interviews] scare me. How are they going to misinterpret my words or take something out of context? And one line nowadays …”

Aniston explained that after Pitt left her for Jolie, headlines constantly questioned her love life and whether she wanted to have children. “It was such juicy reading for people. If they didn’t have their soap operas, they had their tabloids,” she said. She admitted that she felt personally hurt by the attention, sharing, “It’s a shame that it had to happen, but it happened. And boy did I take it personally.”

The actress referred to that period as the “love triangle” years. Her advice to herself then was simple: “Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep on walking, girl.” Aniston acknowledged that she didn’t have the strength at the time to ignore the media. “We’re human beings, even though some people don’t want to believe we are. They think, You signed up for it, so you take it. But we really didn’t sign up for that,” she said.

After her split from Pitt, Aniston had high-profile relationships with John Mayer and Vince Vaughn before marrying Justin Theroux in 2015. The couple split in 2018 and went through what she called a gentle divorce.

Meanwhile, Pitt married Jolie in 2014, and the couple had three biological children—Shiloh, 19, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 17, and adopted three more: Maddox, 24, Pax, 21, and Zahara, 20. Their marriage ended after an alleged plane incident in 2016, followed by years of custody and asset disputes. A settlement was finally reached in December 2024, according to Jolie’s lawyer.

Aniston has focused on friendships and family in recent years. Vanity Fair reports that Jason Bateman, a close friend, said she is like a “co-mom” to his daughters, Francesca, 18, and Maple, 13. She is also friends with Gwyneth Paltrow, who dated Pitt in the 1990s, and Aniston confirmed, “Oh, of course. How can we not? We’re girls.”

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