Jennifer Aniston has candidly revealed that she unsuccessfully tried in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to fall pregnant.
The Friends actress, who has been subjected to pregnancy speculation frequently over the years, revealed for the first time in an interview with Allure magazine that she tried "everything" to have a baby but has now made peace with the fact that the "ship has sailed".
"It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road," Jennifer said of a period several years ago. "All the years and years and years of speculation... It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would've given anything if someone had said to me, 'Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour.' You just don't think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed."
The 53-year-old insisted that she has "zero regrets" and now feels "a little relief" because she no longer has to wonder if a child might be in her future.
The actress also slammed the tabloids for running stories suggesting she was "selfish" by refusing to have children and that her first marriage to Brad Pitt ended because she wouldn't have kids.
"God forbid a woman is successful and doesn't have a child. And (they said) the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn't give him a kid. It was absolute lies," she stated.
Jennifer wrote an op-ed for The Huffington Post in 2016 in which she hit out at the media for its obsession with her being pregnant, and she explained to Allure that she had to say something because she got "so frustrated".
"I was like, 'I've just got to write this because it's so maddening and I'm not superhuman to the point where I can't let it penetrate and hurt,'" she shared.
Towards the end of the interview, the star added, "I've spent so many years protecting my story about IVF. I'm so protective of these parts because I feel like there's so little that I get to keep to myself. The (world) creates narratives that aren't true, so I might as well tell the truth. I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation. I don't have anything to hide."
Jennifer was married to Brad between 2000 and 2005 and to Justin Theroux between 2015 and 2017.
