Jennifer Aniston has a problem that most aspiring actors would die to have: She’s too beloved. Factor in that she’s also too recognizable, too beautiful and apparently too eager to sign a million-year Aveeno skincare contract in blood, and you get a little thing I like to call “subversive ubiquity.” This is where an actor widely known for one long-running role, usually on television, finally concedes that disappearing into another character is all but impossible. But instead of accepting their Faustian fate and relegating themselves to being famous for fame’s sake, they attempt to subvert their cultural ubiquity into something just as interesting, something that is, in its own way, an art form: playing themselves.
Now, one might think that it would be easy for an actor to play themselves. There must be no prep involved, so they can just show up to the set and fire off some lines, right? Wrong. Playing oneself is more difficult than it seems. It’s a skill that requires both an innate understanding of your own identity and the world’s perception of you. Do you think Aveeno could tie with Dove and Jergens in a 2024 survey of America’s most trusted body lotions if Jennifer Aniston couldn’t convince people that her home office is a Wayfair showroom that is also, somehow, a kitchen? I think not. Aniston’s great skill isn’t acting; it’s knowing how to be both the everywoman and herself. It’s why she largely sinks in dramas but succeeds in comedies, where she can portray a version of herself that makes people laugh just by thinking, “Isn’t it so funny that Jennifer Aniston said that?”
