Why Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt Refused to Work Together While Married

Brad Pitt, left, and his wife Jennifer Aniston arrive for the screening of the film "Troy," directed by German director Wolfang Petersen, at the 57th Film Festival in Cannes, France, Thursday, May 13, 2004. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau)

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt divorced waaay back in 2005. But it looks like the perennially single actors’ sensational relationship will last forever.

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So what was the secret to the couple’s relationship?

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt: The It Couple That Once Was

Many years back, Aniston and Pitt each revealed they were careful not to work together too much while they were married. Sure, Pitt guested on Friends in November 2001, playing a guy with a grudge against Aniston’s Rachel Green character.

But beyond that, the two danced around dancing with each other onscreen.

When the BBC asked Jennifer Aniston about acting onscreen more with Pitt, she said they didn’t want to because their real-life relationship would distract viewers.

“I don’t think so — not in the near future,” she said in February 2004, the year before they divorced. “That would be just asking for trouble. You wouldn’t even see the movie, because it would be too much of a show in another way. Maybe years down the line, if the right thing came along, of course, we’d love to. Ocean’s Twenty, maybe.”

Brad Pitt was on the same page, as reflected in a May 2004 interview he did with News 19.

“You look at past case studies of couples working together in films, and the odds are really against us,” he said.

Pitt also commented on Gigli, the box-office bomb that supposedly split apart Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez — before they got back together many years later.

“I actually liked Gigli,” Pitt admitted. “I thought [the criticism] was unjust and more of a response to the over-saturation in the media. Affleck did some really great stuff in there.”

Pitt also confessed that he knew tabloids would hound him and Aniston when they paired up.

“That’s what I get for stepping in the ring,” he said. “I spent the first few years fighting it. It just takes up so much of your life, you miss your life almost. And it rarely has any basis in reality.”

So, aside from Brad Pitt’s guest-star appearance on Friends and Jennifer Aniston’s joke about Ocean’s Twenty, did they share the screen again?

Jennifer and Brad’s Fast Times Together

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It’s clear that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt continue to maintain a friendship. For example, he attended her 50th birthday party in February 2019 — a year after she and then-husband Justin Theroux separated, Entertainment Tonight reported.

Also, in September 2020, with COVID raging, the ex-spouses lent their respective star power to a live reading of Fast Times at Ridgemont High on Zoom. Proceeds from the event — which also featured Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Morgan Freeman, and others — went to charity. Specifically, to Penn’s nonprofit crisis response organization, Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE).

Aniston played read the part of Linda Barrett — the love interest of Brad Hamilton, read by Pitt.

That same month, Aniston told Howard Stern that she and Pitt indeed are friends, according to Access. “Brad and I are … buddies. We’re friends.”

Aniston insisted there was no awkwardness between the two during the Fast Times reading.

“It was absolutely fun,” she reportedly said.

Read More: Jennifer Aniston Says ‘There Are No More Movie Stars.’ Uhh … What?

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