Jennifer Aniston is showing her love for pal Paul Rudd in honor of his birthday.
“Happy Birthday Paul Rudd,” Aniston, 55, wrote via Instagram Story on Sunday, April 7. “I love you, you ageless freak!”
Alongside the message, Aniston shared a clip from their 2012 film, Wanderlust. The video began with a scene of Rudd, 55, killing a fly to the horror of Kathryn Hahn and others.
In addition to Wanderlust, the actors have appeared side by side in several projects, including the 1998 movie The Newton Boys and the hit sitcom Friends from 2002 to 2004. When Rudd and Aniston met on the set of Friends, he later revealed that they got off to a rocky start.
“I was on the set for my first episode and Jennifer was on a Segway because she had broken her toe, and everyone was marveling at it,” he said during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show in 2019. “Matt LeBlanc asked to have a go and immediately knew how to do it. I then asked to try it, too.”
He continued: “I spun around and rolled it right over Jennifer’s foot. The producers’ look of panic was as if to say, ‘Is it too late to fire him? Has his character been established yet?’ I felt awful. Such an inauspicious start.”
Rudd also recalled a cringe-worthy interaction with Aniston while filming the finale episode. “The show was a phenomenon and I was in the very last episode, which made no sense to me whatsoever,” he said. “I was on the sound stage and I’d see Jennifer Aniston crying … and I thought, ‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ so to break the ice I went over and said, ‘Well, we did it, what a ride.’ [The] jokes inevitably fell flat.”
After playing coy about their rumored relationship for years, Aniston admitted the twosome were “together when we were, like, 12.”
While Rudd and Aniston may not have found their happily ever after with each other, they have since moved on. Rudd tied the knot with wife Julie Yaeger in February 2003, welcoming son Jack and daughter Darby in 2006 and 2010, respectively.
Aniston, for her part, exchanged vows with Brad Pitt in 2000, but the pair announced their split in 2005. In 2011, she began a relationship with Justin Theroux, whom she wed in August 2015. Three years later, the couple announced their decision to separate.
Aniston opened up about her positive perspective on her dating life, telling Elle in 2018, “My marriages, they’ve been very successful, in [my] personal opinion. And when they came to an end, it was a choice that was made because we chose to be happy, and sometimes happiness didn’t exist within that arrangement anymore.”
