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Jennifer Aniston says she grew up ‘in a household that was destabilised and felt unsafe’

Jennifer Aniston attends Variety's 2019 Power of Women: Los Angeles on 11 October, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Jennifer Aniston attends Variety's 2019 Power of Women: Los Angeles on 11 October, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images

Jennifer Aniston has spoken about her childhood, saying she grew up “in a household that was destabilised and felt unsafe”.

The actor was responding to Sandra Bullock’s assertion that she has “a way of pushing joy and positivity”.

“I think that it comes from growing up in a household that was destabilised and felt unsafe,” Aniston told Bullock for a piece published in Interview Magazine.

“Watching adults being unkind to each other,” she added, “and witnessing certain things about human behaviour that made me think: ‘I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to experience this feeling I’m having in my body right now. I don’t want anyone else that I ever come in contact with ever to feel that.'”

She continued: “So I guess I have my parents to thank. You can either be angry or be a martyr, or you can say, ‘You’ve got lemons? Let’s make lemonade.'”

Aniston’s parents divorced when she was nine years old, and the actor has previously spoken about her complicated relationship with her late mother Nancy Dow.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in 2018, Aniston said: “She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like.

“I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for and it was something that really resonated with me, this little girl just wanting to be seen and wanting to be loved by a mom who was too occupied with things that didn’t quite matter.”

On Tuesday (12 February), Aniston’s Friends co-star Cox shared a photograph of the pair together on Instagram mark the actor’s 51st birthday.