Talkin' "Rumors" with Jennifer Aniston and Shirley MacLaine

You've heard all the "rumors"; Jen was photographed topless.. , Jen is hot for Vince Vaughn, Jen is shattered over her divorce etc. Well, we just spoke with the actress and her feisty Rumor Has It film legend co-star Shirley MacLaine in Pasadena, Ca. and Jen is just fine, thank you.

Shirley plays Jen's grandma in the romantic comedy and we got the idea that the Hollywood legend's motherly advice helped younger Jen get through a tuff time. She was going through the Brad break-up while shooting the film. Jennifer plays a young woman who learns that her own Pasadena family was probably the real-life inspiration for the famous classic film The Graduate in which a young man has affairs with both a mother and her daughter.

Jen and Shirley, two actresses from different generations, seem like old pals and were really chatty and very candid with us about the film, Jen's tough year, their mutual hatred of the dangerous paparazzi, Jen's new life post Brad and post "Friends" and future projects for both ladies. These are also two very bright and funny women!

Let's set the scene: We're by the pool at the beautiful Ritz Carlton hotel in Pasadena. Jennifer looks stylish with a healthy-looking tan and wears a black, sleeveless, high-neck tank top and patterned brown shawl with blue design, jeans, long, gold dangle earrings and no rings except for a very, very thin gold band on her right hand. Her blonde highlighted hair is down. Shirley is in dark green suit over a cheery animal print blouse and wears huge gold hoop earrings. They arrive to take their seats in front of us and Jen asks herself a question....

Jennifer: Why am I traveling with an empty water bottle? It's like a blankie.

She tosses it into the trash.

TeenHollywood: Okay, Kevin Costner's character Beau seems like he could be a lot of fun. Other than his age, what's really wrong with him? Why didn't your character Sarah choose him?

Jennifer: I liked him more than Jeff [Mark Ruffalo's character] too. It's just unrealistic [with him]. It's fun. It's adventure but there's something a little odd about a guy that's holding a torch... [for a woman he dated years ago] I don't know.

TeenHollywood: But there's this well-accepted thing about older men and younger women.

Jennifer: That never pans out. Because I think eventually you grow up. When I was like 21 I dated an older man, about 18 years older. It was stupid. It was. It was fun for a minute then like 'can I get you some tea or a crutch'?

TeenHollywood: What attracted you to this project?

Jennifer: It was fun. It was light. It was the first job after "Friends" so I felt it was a nice little delicate step out of the nest. It wasn't that complicated and I also really thought, as far as these romantic comedies go, this was interesting; to have The Graduate as a backdrop. There was something interesting as opposed to the formulaic girl gets guy, fakes it to the fiancée to fool the guy that she really wants and then she really doesn't get him.. blah, blah. Not that there is anything wrong with it. There's just so many ways you can tell a story. But, people get lazy and I thought Ted [Griffin, writer and first director of the project] did a really good job.

TeenHollywood: Do you remember when you first saw The Graduate?

Jennifer: I do. I was a teenager. And my mom, she says, was in a scene of The Graduate that got cut out. She worked at the hotel. I don't know. She says it. [Shirley and Jen both say] She says a lot of things [laughter].

TeenHollywood: Shirley, you had to be familiar with The Graduate before this movie.

Shirley: I wasn't born [impish grin]. Actually, I've met a lot of people in the last three days here around the Ritz Carlton who say they know the real Mrs. Robinson. So, 'rumor has it'....

TeenHollywood: Seems like you two got along really well during this movie.

Jennifer: Yeah. It was instant.

TeenHollywood: Jennifer, how are you like your character Sarah and how are you different?

Shirley whispers: Would you [do it] in the bathroom [like Sarah does]?

Jennifer: [laughs] It's not fun. Uh, I think Sarah is a little more...way more self-indulgent than I am. I love my family but I still wonder if they're really my family. Don't we all?

Shirley: We're all aliens.

Jennifer: I guess. I don't have as much fear and I figured [the family thing] out a little earlier than she did. She has a little arrested development I guess.

TeenHollywood: Do you identify with her insecurities? Are you more secure about your life now that you are so successful?

Jennifer: I don't think success has anything to do with making me secure with my life. I think my personal, emotional experiences give me the ability to be more secure with who I am. Success, I've been very blessed.

TeenHollywood: This has been a time of ups and downs for you. What can other women learn from what you've been through?

Jennifer: You know, I'd say 'just sit in it. Be in it. Be with it'. There's nothing to be embarrassed about. There's nothing embarrassing about anything. I'll tell you, at this point, there's such a freedom in a weird way. You can just say, 'here I am. This is it'. It was like I was saying to Shirley today, 'well, I might as well pull my pants down at this point. They've seen everything else'. [laughter]

TeenHollywood: It's nice you've got a sense of humor about all this. Have you always had it?

Jennifer: I have since my childhood. It's all boring.

Shirley: [pats Jen's hand] She has come through what must be one of the most painful and difficult requirements of any human being, much less a young person. To live their life in a spotlight like this is so painful. And to have to work and do three pictures a year? That's really hard to separate your sense of whatever you're going through inside, while growing up, I might add. And I'm really proud of her for the way she is handling this. She's an icon of what to do when you get trampled in public. Her emotional discipline is extraordinary and I really want to compliment her for that. [Jen looks grateful]

TeenHollywood: Well, where did you get that emotional stamina?

Jennifer: I don't know. I think it's partly your parents. I learned by example of what not to do by watching my parents. I watched my mother be very bitter and very angry throughout a divorce and never let it go and waste the whole second half of her life. So, I thank her for that unconscious sacrifice of what not to do. I think accountability, taking responsibility, because it's so easy to blame, to point to be victimized. That's just a waste of time.

Shirley: That's the real lesson that she's teaching everybody. She says so in public and certainly in private. 'Where is my role in this? How have I contributed to this?'....in a very spiritual way instead of blaming and that's a huge step and really hard.

TeenHollywood: What was your reaction to the overwhelming public support of you during this tough year?

Jennifer: On an energetic level, I feel it's wonderful. It was very comforting. I was actually surprised to see that kind of a reaction but I really did kind of tune out all of that; to reading things and hearing things. As much as positive stuff was there, there's so much toxic stuff and just to move through it as cleanly as I could, I just had to tune it all out. Sitting in it, facing it, it's over fast. You move through it faster.

TeenHollywood: So you don't read what's written about you?

Jennifer: It's just a waste of time.

Shirley: I read 'um then I call her. [laughter] You won't believe what they said today.

TeenHollywood: The paparazzi are still a big pest.

Shirley: They are worst than a pest.

Jennifer: They're horrendous. I don't understand...

Shirley: They belong in the slammer. Free Tookie Williams and put them in there.

TeenHollywood: This photographer came up with a whiney explanation of why it's not his fault [a recent attempt to get a racy pic of Jen]. He said he just wanted to take a nice photograph.

Jennifer: There's a thing called the red carpet. It's this Thursday if you just want a nice photograph.

Shirley: They pay these guys so much money that they really can put microphones under beds and tables. Then they get a story that's got an ounce of truth, then Time magazine sits up and Newsweek and the rest of them and before you know it, they're in the psychology of 'you know, they might have something there'.

TeenHollywood: Shirley, did you ever have any of this in your day?

Shirley: No. In my day, I never went through what these kids are going through, absolutely not. First of all, People magazine hadn't been invented, nor US nor OK nor Star nor Globe. It was only Confidential and it went on out at Holiday House in Malibu and there was an interesting by-play that went on. People who were having illicit affairs but wanted to be written about, they would go to a table where they knew there was a microphone and then [the owner] or whoever, they would report and that's how they got in the paper.

Jennifer: That's fascinating!

Shirley: But what she has to go through every morning or Cameron Diaz or Nicole, these wonderful women I've worked with, half their day is spent trying to escape these mothers. It's just not right.

Jennifer: And they're just so reckless.

Shirley: Somebody's gonna get killed.

Jennifer: Not kidding. If I drive really slowly and watch what's happening behind me, these men are driving on sidewalks. They're cutting through intersections. It's very weird. Now they are hiring gang members. It's a whole new breed. There's this whole new photo agency that's been started. There was an article in the [L.A.] Times a couple of weeks ago, they are basically hiring retired gangsters and they just need to shoot a picture. They don't have to have any photography school. They just have to know how to be aggressive and scare the s*** out of people and get the picture.

Shirley: And the other thing is these restaurants, particularly in Malibu, they get six hundred dollars a call. These guys working in take out...I did my little investigation, and that's what they get. They do the call if Britney Spears and the dancer show up. I guess next it's my dog pooping [laughter].

TeenHollywood: Rob Reiner took over as director after you had started filming. What did he bring to the production? He's got the touch for romantic comedy.

Jennifer: He's fun to be around and he's so interesting on many levels. But, he also just has a nice balance. He was really good at giving Sarah a focus, a point of view. It had a couple of incarnations, this script and when I first read it, Sarah didn't have as clear a point of view. She was very reactionary to all the characters that surrounded her. And so [she's munching on a Halls cough drop all though this part] he was really helpful in giving her more of a through line. He's just good with funny...heart and funny and he was an actor and that's good.

TeenHollywood: This was your first project after "Friends". How long did it take you to get used to not going to the same place every day?

Jennifer: Well, I was two stages over. I got to visit the set. It was pathetic. I went up to my dressing room and sat. It was Drea DeMatteo's room. No, but basically, when August rolled around and normally, I was ready to go back to "Friends", I sat there for about a day and went, 'well, this is awkward' but it just happens. It was so ready to be done. Everybody was ready to let go.

TeenHollywood: Do you still keep in touch with the "Friends"?

Jennifer: I do. I see Courtney every week. I'm the godmother of her little baby girl. And Matty Perry I saw last week and Matty LeBlanc. I speak to all of them.

TeenHollywood: Do you make an effort to keep up with them?

Jennifer: It's not an effort. It's effortless. We just do it.

TeenHollywood: Do you consider yourself a role model at all for younger girls?

Jennifer: I don't ever see myself as a role model, poster child for anything. We're all just doing the best we can.

TeenHollywood: You have a smaller movie coming out, Friends with Money. What kind of character do you play?

Jennifer: There's a group of five women, Catherine Keener, Fran McDormand, Joan Cusack and myself and I'm the youngest of the group and everybody's sort of married and evolved in their lives and I'm pretty much the drifter, the lost little sheep who is a maid and I have a little bit of a pot smoking issue and I'm a little unmotivated and my friends all have money and I don't and it's about how we deal with relationships and how money will effect friendships. It's sweet.

TeenHollywood: The Sundance Film Festival is coming up. Do you dread it?

Jennifer: Dread? No, it's a ball. Didn't we have fun? I loved it. I thought it was so much fun. If you're happy with the movie you did then it's great. You get to ski a little bit and wear snow boots. It's fun.

TeenHollywood: Shirley, your wardrobe in this is wild and flamboyant. Any input from you?

Shirley: Yes. It's all me. I had so much input. A bright red suit and a pink one and the black one with the diamonds. You know, when you've been in the business 51 years, you know what your body looks good in and what it doesn't. I liked the suits and we all agreed on that.

TeenHollywood: What's next, Shirley?

Shirley: I'm going a picture with [Richard] Attenborough in March, Closing the Ring. It's his English Patient. It's a World War Two story but it's done from now and I play a woman who ends up with three men in succession, [over the years] because of things that happen in the war. There's the younger me and the daughter of me. It's hard to explain.

TeenHollywood: What are you doing next, Jennifer?

Jennifer: I'm relaxing. Sundance is next.

TeenHollywood: Shirley, are you working on a book?

Shirley: Yeah, 'Sageing, Not Aging'.

TeenHollywood: Cool title. How do you stay looking so young?

Shirley: Good lighting. No. I hike and eat pretty well.

At this point, the ladies have to hike on to do some T.V. interviews.

***

Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.