Jennifer Aniston has opened up about her troubled relationship with her mother, Nancy Dow.
The Hollywood actress got candid in an interview with Elle magazine, while promoting her new Netflix film Dumplin’ – in which she plays an unapologetic former pageant queen with a young daughter.
Jennifer has wanted to do a movie about the relationship between mothers and daughters for a long time, and part of what drew her to Dumplin’ was the way it echoed her own “challenging upbringing.”
She explained, “She was from this world of, ‘Honey, take better care of yourself,’ or ‘Honey, put your face on,’ or all of those odd sound bites that I can remember from my childhood.”
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“My mom said those things because she really loved me. It wasn’t her trying to be a bitch or knowing she would be making some deep wounds that I would then spend a lot of money to undo.”
“She did it because that was what she grew up with. ‘You want to be happy. It’s hard for big girls.’ She was missing what was [actually] important.
“I think she was just holding on and doing the best she could, struggling financially and dealing with a husband who was no longer there. Being a single mom in the ’80s I’m sure was pretty crappy,” she said.
Instead of holding on to that hurt, Jen chose to “use what I grew up with as an example of what I do not want to be or live in.”
Read more of Jen’s interview with ELLE here.
