Jennifer Aniston (b. February 11, 1969)
Raised in New York, Los Angeles, and Greece, Jennifer Aniston had her first taste of acting at age 11 when she joined the Rudolf Steiner School's drama club, and she began her professional training as a drama student at New York's High School of the Performing Arts. In 1987, after graduation, she started appearing in Off-Broadway productions and television.
In 1994, Aniston was asked to audition for the role of Monica for a TV pilot called "Friends Like These." She refused and won instead the role of Rachel Green, the suburban princess turned coffee peddler. She was the only "Friends" cast member to win an Emmy and go on to a successful film career.
Aniston told Rolling Stone (September 27, 2001): "I wouldn't call myself a pothead. I mean, I enjoy it once in a while. There's nothing wrong with that. Everything in moderation." Commenting on anonymous reports in the tabloids about Aniston and then-husband Brad Pitt's "drug use," Aniston said, "You see something like that--me and my husband, hooked on drugs. Then you read the story, and it says you smoke pot. It's not even cocaine or shooting heroin. Pot!"
Horrid tabloid stories speculated that Aniston and Pitt were unable to conceive a child because Pitt's pot smoking harmed his sperm count, and Aniston even went so far as to make a movie, The Good Girl, with this premise. But Brad had no trouble putting a Pitt in Angelina Jolie's stomach. If conception was a problem, it could be related to our insane standard of beauty for women: reportedly Aniston shed 20 pounds for her role on "Friends."
In 2006, Aniston sued photographer Peter Brandt over topless photographs Brant took of the actress in her backyard. In a Notice of Demrurer obtained by Jossip.com, Brandt claims that some of the photos he took depict Aniston and sometime-boyfriend Vince Vaughn smoking pot together. She smoked that year (in bed) in the movie Friends with Money.
In the 2013 film Life of Crime, Aniston plays a housewife who is kidnapped for ransom by some bumbling thugs. While in captivity, she smokes pot and giggles while watching the classic Sanford and Son scene involving marijuana. In the film, as so often in life, smoking a little weed leads to a woman looking at the world in a different, better way.
The actress did a funny “lipflip” with Jimmy Fallon in January 2015, announcing she was backing the Seattle Seahawks in the Superbowl because “We got the weed, man.” Cannabis has been shown to be helpful for chronic pain, from which her character suffers in that year's movie Cake. She was nominated for other awards but snubbed by the Academy for her brave performance in that film.Obviously, occasional indulgence in marijuana hasn't impeded Aniston's career, or harmed her health. Her comments about moderation and the differences between hard and soft drugs are important messages seldom heard in the lock-step 'just say no' repression we'd been living under. For this Aniston received the first "Outie" award, presented by www.VeryImportantPotheads.com.