Jennifer Aniston tried to shed identity as Rachel from 'Friends'
"I could not escape 'Rachel from Friends,' and it's on all the time..."
One of Jennifer Aniston's most notable roles has been as Rachel Green on the hit sitcom "Friends."
However, after a 10-year-run, the actress revealed that it was hard for the industry to see her as anything else, which resulted in her trying to distance herself from that image ... and that proved to be tiring.
"You just exhaust yourself," Aniston admitted during The Hollywood Reporter's Drama Actress Roundtable.
"I mean, I could not get Rachel Green off of my back for the life of me," she continued. "I could not escape 'Rachel from Friends,' and it's on all the time and you're like, 'Stop playing that f------ show!'"
"'The Good Girl' was the first time I got to really shed whatever the Rachel character was, and to be able to disappear into someone who wasn't that was such a relief to me," the 51-year-old actress recalled. "But I remember the panic that set over me, thinking, 'Oh God, I don't know if I can do this. Maybe they're right. Maybe everybody else is seeing something I'm not seeing, which is you are only that girl in the New York apartment with the purple walls.'"
"I was almost doing it for myself just to see if I could do something other than that. And it was terrifying because you're doing it in front of the world," she confessed. "So, I just fought with myself and who I was in this industry forever, and it was constantly about trying to prove that I was more than that person."
Eventually, though, "The Morning Show" actress was able to lay her battle to rest.
"There is such a freedom in getting older because you just stop giving a crap," Aniston concluded with a laugh.
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