Jennifer Aniston was forced to drop 30 pounds for playing Rachel Green in ‘Friends’, reveals new book

Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston was asked to lose 30 pounds if she wanted to sustain in the showbiz. She has said that it was always tough to be a woman in the industry and match up to its impossibly high beauty standards.

In a new book, titled “Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era”, Saul Austerlitz has penned the events in detail.

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“It is still a fantasy for younger people of what this urban life can be like — what adult life can be like,” says Austerlitz, who is a  Brooklyn resident.  He watched his first episode of “Friends” at the age of 16.

Twenty-five years after Marta Kauffman and David Crane created “Friends,” this new book looks to uncover the behind-the-scenes secrets to its success.

In her book, Austerlitz writes that “She had to lose thirty pounds if she wanted to stay in Hollywood. Los Angeles was a tough place to be an actress, it was a tough place to be a woman, and Jennifer Aniston’s agent was reluctantly leveling with her”.

“Aniston was hardly fat everyone could see she was beautiful but as the show she would one day become indelibly associated with later made a point of noting, the camera added 10 pounds,” Austerlitz added.

According to the excerpts obtained by People magazine, Aniston once received a call back where she was told to wear a leotard, and she jokingly said to her agent: “This’ll blow it for me.” Her representative, in turn, “responded seriously”.

Aniston had also discussed the same call back in a 1996 interview with The Rolling Stones magazine.

“My agent gave it to me straight. The nicest thing he ever did. The disgusting thing of Hollywood I wasn’t getting lots of jobs cause’ I was too heavy,” Aniston had said at that time.

The actress who is in her 50’s now, was cast in the role of Rachel Green in “Friends” in 1994 and the show made her a global star, giving her a strong footing in Hollywood.