|
When we first saw Jennifer Aniston adorning the cover of the May issue of Vanity Fair, we were, admittedly, taken aback. Jennifer Aniston? On Vanity Fair? Who's next? Debra Messing? Calista Flockhart? Dylan McDermott, for crying out loud?
Despite recent theorizing about the closing of the celebrity chasm between television and film, there's still a certain grandeur that comes with movie stardom that...well, doesn't come with TV stardom. Call us old-fashioned, but movie stars belong on the cover of Vanity Fair, and TV stars belong on the cover of TV Guide. Think of it this way: wouldn't it just look weird if, say, Lisa Kudrow were on the cover of Vanity Fair? Or Courteney Cox? Or Matthew Perry or David Schwimmer or Matt LeBlanc? When TV stars become movie stars, then, by all means, move to the front of the line. George Clooney circa ER? No. George Clooney now? Of course.
But back to Ms. Aniston. Yes, we know she's a special case. Yes, we know she's married to Brad Pitt. Yes, we know about the hair. And, frankly, yes, we know that Vanity Fair is notoriously unpicky about its cover subjects. (Once you've fronted Gretchen Mol, the bar has not only been lowered, it's pretty much been taken down and stored in the sports shed.)
Still, the whole affair made us a bit uneasy. Something was amiss in Fameopolis. Then we heard that, in the article itself, Aniston comes across as relatively thoughtful and self-effacing and genuinely conflicted about her career. Then we read the article and...yes, it's true: she does come across as relatively thoughtful and self-effacing and conflicted. And then we thought: isn't that all the more reason to ratchet back the fame, for everyone's sake? After all, if even she's not so sure she wants it...well, to paraphrase Debbie Allen: you don't want fame? Well, right here's where you start paying it back. In sweat.
Aniston -- who, it should be said, has always been funny on Friends, and who can't really be blamed for the fact that the show ran out of gas two years ago, or that the writers have gone back to the Rachel/Ross well about three too many times at this point, so that the inevitable series-finale wedding is just going to provoke at best an Ipecac-syrup-esque sense of release, and who is no more addicted to her own go-to schtick (pucker face, flap hands like two birds caught on barbed wire) than any of the other five stars of the show are to theirs -- will always represent a certain kind of Hollywood success story. You know the one: move to L.A., toil away, get nose job, lose thirty pounds at agent's behest, land part on unlikely TV hit, appear naked-but-for-the-nipples in Rolling Stone, sport trend-sparking hairstyle, repeatedly attempt to make jump to big screen in lookalike romantic comedy flops, gradually eclipse co-stars, aerobicize yourself so severely that controversy-avoiding People magazine anoints you poster child of starvation epidemic, marry Sexiest Man Alive, start online chat room to try to counter damage you've done to self-esteem of nation's adolescent girls, live conflicted life in hilltop mansion dodging paparazzi and eating Taco Bell. Conflicted? Hell, we'd be downright homicidal.
After all, Jennifer Aniston has done everything that Hollywood has asked of her -- mentally, physically, and surgically -- and what has she got in exchange? Well, as the Vanity Fair cover reminds us, she makes $750,000 a week, her hair's "still cool," and she's married to Brad Pitt. In short, she's "Hollywood Royalty," as the magazine crowns her. Come now -- Hollywood Royalty? She may yet develop into a twenty-first-century Goldie Hawn, but right now she's looking more like a twenty-first-century Rhoda.
Frankly, we're guessing that, when all is said and done, Ms. Aniston doesn't even want to be remembered for being married to Brad Pitt or for sporting the most imitated coif since Farrah's flip. Or even, for that matter, for being the star of a long-running sitcom, which really just makes her a hotter version of Rhea Perlman. In short, we're guessing that she doesn't want to go down in history as the personification of the ever-widening gap between achievement and celebrity -- or, in her specific case, for just how far you can get in this world on a hit, a husband, and a hairstyle.
|
