LOS ANGELES: Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston was asked to lose 30 pounds if she wanted to sustain in the showbiz.
In a new book, titled "Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era", Saul Austerlitz said it was always tough to be a woman in the industry and match up to its impossibly high beauty standards.
"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 levelling with her," Austerlitz writes.
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According to the excerpts obtained by People magazine, Aniston once received a callback 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 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.
Aniston had also discussed the same call back in a 1996 interview with The Rolling Stones magazine.
"My agent gave it to me straight. 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 actor, 50, 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.