Horrible Jennifer Aniston

Being a rich and famous movie star isn't a bad gig, and most of those who have managed it make a point of enjoying it in large part because, unlike royalty or billionaire heiresses, they've usually had their share of awful jobs on their way to rich-and-famous.

Jennifer Aniston, for example, spent 10 years playing Rachel on Friends (1994-2004), which left her rich even by movie-star standards and famous by almost any criteria, and now she stars in major motion pictures. As she settles in to talk about her newest and perhaps most offbeat film, the comedy Horrible Bosses, she looks slim and stylish in a formfitting pencil skirt by Calvin Klein and a matching Tom Ford top. She's thin and muscular, with a ready smile befitting a woman who has achieved practically everything short of an Oscar that an actress can aspire to—including, if the rumours are true, a fresh new romance with actor Justin Theroux. After winning a reputation as a latter-day 'America's Sweetheart' on Friends, she has been doing everything from over-the-top comedies such as Bruce Almighty, The Break-Up to dramas such as The Good Girl and Derailed.

In Horrible Bosses, set to open nationwide on July 8, Aniston adds a new type to her filmography: a comic villain. Instead of playing an oppressed worker, as she has in The Good Girl, she plays one of the title characters: predatory dentist Julia Harris, who ruthlessly harasses her hygienist (Charlie Day) for sex, resorting even to blackmail and threats. Is the moviegoing public ready for Jennifer Aniston as, well, a sleaze? She doesn't know and, she says, she doesn't care. "I don't want to play it safe all the time," the actress says defiantly. "I wanted to do something that allowed me to go in a different direction." She also liked the gender reversal of having the woman as the harasser. "It's usually the male character in that role," she says. "That's why I thought of her like a guy." Director Seth Gordon says that Aniston was his first choice to play Julia, precisely because of the contrast between Aniston's usual image and the character's down-and-dirty dialogue. "The only person I could imagine saying those raunchy lines and having it be electric and amazing was Aniston," he says. As for Day, he says that he was shocked to do so many "dirty scenes with Rachel from Friends. I was intimidated. My job was to act shocked at what she was saying. That was real shock."

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