Reese Witherspoon, Selena Gomez and More Stars Who Will Always Love Jennifer Aniston

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Reese Witherspoon, Selena Gomez and More Stars Who Will Always Love Jennifer Aniston

A true friend! Jennifer Aniston is one of the most beloved figures in Hollywood — and even her fellow stars are on the Team Jen bandwagon. The Friends alum took the industry by storm as Rachel Green in the classic ‘90s sitcom and scored a number of strong bonds with her fellow actors as her career continued to blossom. Her longtime Friends costars — Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt Leblanc and Matthew Perry — still rave about their connections with the Golden Globe winner to this day. Aniston has been a rock for some of her closest pals through their biggest ups and downs. Cox admitted in a 2010 interview that she leaned on her former costar during her separation from David Arquette. The Just Go With It star could relate to Cox’s emotional state at that time having separated from Brad Pitt after five years of marriage in 2005. [jwplayer GqM6mxB9-zhNYySv2] "We just have fun, we laugh, we’re inseparable and it’s great," the Cougar Town alum told Access Online at the time. "It’s funny, a lot of really close friends are kind of going through this right now or like Jennifer [who] has gone through it ... yeah, Jennifer has been amazing for sure." The Murder Mystery actress is loyal in both her personal and professional lives, often teaming up with a handful of costars again and again, like Adam Sandler and Jason Bateman. Sandler first worked with Aniston in 2011 and told Us Weekly that he values the strength of their working relationship. "Jennifer and I are great friends," he shared in January 2020. "She works well without me. I’m just glad when she invites me for the ride!" Even up-and-coming actors know that nothing compares to working alongside the Morning Show star. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who stars with Aniston in the Apple TV+ series, told Us exclusively that she admired her colleague for being a "very powerful woman" both on and off the set. It’s no surprise that Aniston’s friends feel so special and loved when they’re around her. The actress prioritizes her friendships over everything else, revealing to the U.K.’s Red magazine in 2011 that her chosen family is all she needs to get by. "Where would you be without friends? Where would you be without people to pick you up when you need lifting?" she said at the time. "There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing." Scroll down to see how the Dumplin’ star’s famous friends have showered her in praise over the years. [podcast_block]

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Adam Sandler

The two frequent costars have had a friendship that’s spanned decades after they first met at a deli in the ‘90s, where they bonded over French toast. Sandler spoke at Aniston’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2012, saying she said had "a permanent place” in America’s heart. "She prayed for three things: to have everyone in the entire world fascinated with her haircut, to one day star in a movie about an evil leprechaun who kills people and most importantly, to receive a star on the prestigious Hollywood Walk of Fame. Well today, Jennifer, the trifecta is here," Sandler said at the time. "I love this girl, my wife loves this girl, the entire world loves this girl."

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Brad Pitt

Despite their rocky split, the exes have reconnected and formed a strong friendship over the last few years. In 2011, he admitted, "Jen is an incredibly giving, loving, and hilarious woman who remains my friend. It is an important relationship I value greatly." When faced with the possibility of bumping into Aniston during the 2020 awards season, Pitt wasn’t worried about any awkward interactions. "I’ll run into Jen, she’s a good friend," he said at the Golden Globes. "The second most important reunion of her year? I understand! That was a play on Friends. They were saying that."

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Cole Sprouse

The former Disney star made an adorable turn on Friends as Ross Geller’s son, Ben. Years later, his time working with Aniston still leaves him star struck. "That’s when I fell in love with her," the Riverdale star teased during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in November 2018. "I remember feeling so intimidated by my crush on her that I completely blanked and forgot every single one of my lines. And she just stared at me and was waiting. One of the crew members, it was a cameraman, just goes, ‘That little boy’s got a crush!’ It broke me."

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Ed Sheeran

The "Perfect" singer formed an unlikely bond with the legendary actress and even joined her and Cox for Thanksgiving in 2013. Speaking to the Daily Mail the next year, Sheeran marveled at how down-to-earth the TV icons were. "Jennifer Aniston’s just [so] friendly," he said at the time. "I’d only ever experienced the darker side of Hollywood and they give you faith in everything."

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Jake Gyllenhaal

"She’s a rough one. Not likable. So hard to compliment," the actor joked to Entertainment Weekly in April 2016 while discussing his film with Aniston, The Good Girl, in which he starred as her love interest. "I will say, I had a crush on her for years. And working with her was not easy ... That’s all I’m going to say. It was lovely. It wasn’t hard, that’s what I would say."

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Jason Bateman

After starring in five movies together, Bateman and Aniston have grown pretty close. In July 2011, the Break Up star joked that he had a fair bit of insider information on his frequent costar. "Well, that's all gonna come out in my autobiography," he told the Guardian. "I've got a great deal of dirt on Ms. Aniston, and as long as she continues to hire me for her projects I will not show the pictures ... We've always just really gotten along well. I think I was just fortunate to be a good fit for parts in her films."

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Ben Stiller

After starring alongside each other in Along Came Polly, the two actors formed a fast friendship. "There’s so few — I don’t know, how do say it. I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh there’s so few women who are good at comedy.’ It sounds like a really sexist thing to say. But she really is one of the few actresses I’ve known who has such impeccable timing as a comedian and actress," Stiller told reporters while the pair promoted their 2004 romantic comedy. “She really listens and she has timing ... I don’t think it comes out of a premeditated sort of thing, it’s just in her bones.

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Courteney Cox

"We just have fun, we laugh, we’re inseparable and it’s great," Cox said about her longtime Friends costar amid her separation from David Arquette. "It’s funny, a lot of really close friends are kind of going through this right now or like Jennifer [who] has gone through it … I don’t know what’s going to happen, but, yeah, Jennifer has been amazing for sure." By 2019, their bond was even stronger. "We’re not the only ones who know Jen is a remarkable person," she and Kudrow said while honoring their friend at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Patron of the Artists Awards in November 2019. "She radiates warmth and joy and humor and love."

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Ellen DeGeneres

Aniston was one of the very first guests on the comedian’s daytime talk show in 2003 and the pair’s friendship blossomed from there — to the point where some even thought they were romantically involved. DeGeneres got a little protective over her nearly 30-year connection with the sitcom star in May 2019. "So Reese Witherspoon ... she somehow thinks that she and you are better friends than you and I are, and I just wanna settle this once and for all that you and I are better friends than Reese and you," the host teased as she called Aniston after her interview with Witherspoon.

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Lisa Kudrow

"I think it was unspoken but we instinctively felt like, 'We need to be friends, we need to get along, we need to connect,'" the ‘90s sitcom alum said of her longtime costar during NBC's Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows in 2016. While presenting Aniston with a high honor at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Patron of the Artists Awards in November 2019, Kudrow gushed over her former costar, noting that there was no one more "beloved, generous and deserving" than the Marley & Me star.

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Dolly Parton

"I love her to death. My husband is crazy about her, and he was more excited that I was going to do a movie with her than he was that I got the chance to write all this music," the country music legend told Jimmy Fallon in November 2018 after teaming up with Aniston on the Netflix film Dumplin’. The "9 to 5" singer then joked, "I think he fantasizes, like, a threesome ... She’s wonderful, I love her to death."

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Reese Witherspoon

"We met on the set of Friends, I played her sister," the Legally Blonde star told Harper's Bazaar in October 2019. "She was so sweet to me. I was really nervous, and she was like, ‘Oh, my gosh — don’t worry about it!’ I marveled at her ability to perform in front of a live audience like that with no nerves. They would change all the lines and she was just so effortlessly affable, bubbly, and sunny. We’ve been friends ever since."

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Justin Theroux

Following their amicable 2017 split, Theroux opened up to the New York Times about how he and his ex-wife were managing to keep their bond intact. "The friendship is shifting and changing, you know, so that part is something that we’re both very proud of,” he said at the time. The evolution of their relationship since then has been a positive one. Theroux wished his ex a happy birthday in February 2019, gushing over the Horrible Bosses actress. "Happy Birthday to this fierce Woman," he wrote on Instagram. "Fiercely loving. Fiercely kind and fiercely funny. ❤️ you B."

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Selena Gomez

"I have not only been following her career as a fan since I was 8 and now get to watch her completely transform in her new movie CAKE, I have gotten to have real conversations with such a real heart, made my entire year," the former Disney star, who’s been inspired by Aniston throughout her acting career, captioned a sweet photo of the two of them in December 2014. Her love for the sitcom star has endured over the years. During an interview with Aniston on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in January 2020, the singer recalled the first time they met. "I think we were at Vanity Fair something event, and I was there with my mom, and I walked into the bathroom and I saw you, and you were just so nice," she told Aniston. "You just walked out of the bathroom and you were going back, and my heart stopped."

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Ron Howard

The Happy Days alum was "flattered" by Aniston's love for the classic TV series and told Us in January 2020 that the actress is one of the best in the business. "Very few people can move between comedy and drama, you know, the way she's proven that she can," he said at the time. "She's both very funny with impeccable timing but she's always very honest ... You don't feel like she's a performer, ever. She's a really strong actor." 

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Mark Duplass

The Morning Show actor told Us on the 2020 Golden Globes red carpet that he still had a hard time believing he was lucky enough to work with Aniston on the Apple TV+ series. "Every now and then I will look over and I’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, you’re the girl I fell in love with watching the Man in the Moon when I was 15 years old,'" he said at the time. "Like, ‘Oh my God, you came into my living room when I was a junior in high school in Friends and blew my brains open.'"

Duplass also gushed about Aniston during the 2020 Emmys.

"I wish there was a really cool story about how much we hated each other off-camera like Dirty Dancing and it created such wonderful chemistry, but we're friends and we love each other. She legitimately is one of the most open and sweet persons on the planet," the director told E! News on the red carpet.

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Kaley Cuoco

In September 2020 the Big Bang Theory actress took a trip down memory lane, recalling the time she was cast in Picture Perfect alongside Aniston as a kid.

"Little known fact this was one of the first 'parts' I was ever cast in as a kid. ... I was the last name in the credits. ... When I saw the movie, they had cut my one line, but all I remember is spending the entire day convincing myself to tell Jen how much I love her," Cuoco gushed via Instagram.

She previously told AOL Entertainment in 2019 that she was "obsessed" with Aniston, revealing that she would be her dream costar. "I love her so much. She's also my style icon," Cuoco shared at the time.