Jennifer Aniston opens about 20-year fertility struggle, media scrutiny

Jami Ganz, New York Daily News on Oct 9, 2025

Published in Women

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Nearly a decade after revealing her years of IVF, Jennifer Aniston is expanding on her 20-year struggle “to pursue a family.”

The Emmy winner, 56, admitted to Harper’s Bazaar, in an interview published Wednesday, that “the narrative” about refusing to have children — and the conjecture it affected her marriage to Brad Pitt — did “affect her.”

“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” said the “Morning Show” star and executive producer.

“That’s not anybody’s business. But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it — the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic. It does affect me — I’m just a human being.”

That prompted Aniston to pen the July 2016 Huffington Post op-ed, “For The Record, I Am Not Pregnant. What I Am Is Fed Up,” in which she decried the scrutiny of her body — and women’s bodies in general — which led to speculation on her personal life.

Aniston, who was married to Justin Theroux at the time the op-ed was published, wrote that she was “not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way, as our celebrity news culture would lead us all to believe.”

In 2022, she told Allure that “the baby-making road” had been a “challenging” one.

“I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it,” she said at the time. “I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs.'”

During Aniston’s Harper’s interview, she also discussed the “heartbreaking” October 2023 drowning and ketamine overdose of “Friends” co-star Matthew Perry.

“Boy, for someone who had that much inner turmoil, he sure got to laugh a lot,” said Aniston. “And that was everything to him.”