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Jennifer Aniston GQ Cover

I have to say that the cover of the January issue of GQ (hits stands Dec. 23) has tipped it in for me: I love Jennifer Aniston. There. I said it. Feels good to get it out. While Aniston will never be fully extricated from her association with Ross, Chandler, "Pheebs," and the gang, over the past decade or so she's certainly built enough of a post-Friends persona for me to step forth and pledge my love. Here are the Top 5 reasons I love Jennifer Aniston, despite hating Friends, that do NOT have to do with the fact that I enjoy seeing her naked:

1. Office Space (natch)
2. Her reasoned response to the career-over-baby accusations that had people running around with "I'll have your baby, Brad!" t-shirts during her divorce to Brad Pitt. "A man divorcing would never be accused of choosing career over children....That really pissed me off. I've never in my life said I didn't want to have children," she told Vanity Fair in 2005.
3. Her dig this year at Angelina Jolie, who had publicly talked about falling for Pitt while he was still married to Aniston. "That stuff about how she couldn't wait to get to work every day [while filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith]? That was really uncool," she told Vogue.
4. She's got a thing for rock-n-roll dudes -- first Adam Duritz, and now John Mayer (who's eight years her junior, I might add, which I think is kinda hot...for some reason. I know, I know, pervy old man).
5. The Good Girl, when I first realized there was more to Aniston than "Rach."

Jennifer Aniston & John Mayer Arm in Arm

Jennifer Aniston made it very clear that she and on/off beau John Mayer are very much together as the pair strolled arm-in-arm, in a rare public display of affection in New York last night.

Smiling broadly as she snuggled up to her musician beau, the couple - both dressed in matching blue jeans and black jackets - strolled back to the 31-year-old's New York home after enjoying a dinner date with friends.

The 39-year-old actress looked every inch a woman in love as she enjoyed a break from promotional duties for new film Marley & Me.

Jennifer swapped her thigh-high mini dresses for jeans and a biker jacket as she and John enjoyed a romantic night out.

And it was certainly a lot less revealing than the outfit she wore on the previous night when the actress's thigh-high mini dress revealed plenty of her toned flesh when she appeared on David Letterman's U.S. chat show.

Perhaps having just posed naked for a men's magazine, she thought her outfit rather demure.

Jennifer Aniston's 40th Birthday Party

Jennifer Aniston got John Mayer warmed up for his Grammys performance at her 40th birthday party Saturday night.

Sources tell E! News exclusively that Aniston and Mayer danced and huddled close all night at the bash, which Aniston hosted at her new Beverly Hills home. "She looked hot, and she and John looked really happy," says a source.

The affair was a star-studded one. Among the guests were Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Crow, David Arquette and wife Courteney Cox, Tobey Maguire and wife Jen Meyer, Laura Dern, Kevin Nealon, E!'s Chelsea Handler, and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. (Brangelina, predictably, were not in attendance.)

Revelers partied inside and outside of the sprawling hillside estate, beginning shortly after 7 p.m. until well past 2 a.m.

Another bonus for Aniston: She kept the media at bay. "The police kicked all the paparazzi out of the neighborhood," says a source.

Philanthropy

Aniston is a supporter of many charity foundations. She is a supporter of Friends of El Faro, a grassroots non-profit organization that helps raise money for Casa Hogar Sion—an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico and has appeared in a few advertisements on TV for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. She made a guest appearance on Oprah's Big Give show to support the cause and donated money to help. Aniston hosted September 2008's Stand Up to Cancer show. In the "It Can't Wait" campaign to free Burma, Aniston directed and starred in a video. On April 14, 2007, Aniston received GLAAD's Vanguard Award for her contributions to increased visibility and understanding of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Personal Life

Aniston has previously dated musician Adam Duritz, and was engaged to actor Tate Donovan. Her high-profile relationship with actor Brad Pitt was frequently publicized in the press. She married Pitt on July 29, 2000, in a lavish Malibu wedding. For years their marriage was considered the rare Hollywood success. However, when Pitt showed up to the Ocean's Twelve premiere without Aniston, rumors that their relationship was on the rocks began. In early January 2005, the couple was seen vacationing in the Caribbean with her Friends co-star Courteney Cox and her husband, actor David Arquette, and photos on the beach showed them kissing and affectionate. On January 7, 2005 they announced their separation.

Rumors that Pitt had fallen for actress Angelina Jolie began when they were shooting the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie and Pitt both denied any claims of adultery, with Jolie declaring in an interview in 2005, "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn't be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife." Pitt and Aniston were seen together publicly after announcing their separation, even at a dinner party for Aniston's thirty-sixth birthday in February, and friends of the couple had declared they were reconciling. Aniston, however, filed for divorce on March 25, 2005. A divorce was finalized on October 2, 2005.

Media reports speculated that the split was due to Aniston's refusal to have children with him; t-shirts were sold after their separation with the phrase "I'll Have Your Baby, Brad!". Aniston denied that this was the cause of their split in an August 2005 Vanity Fair interview, stating, "...I've always wanted to have children, and I would never again give up that experience for a career." Aniston also revealed that her divorce prompted her to reach out to her mother, from whom she was estranged for nearly a decade. They initially became estranged when Nancy talked about her daughter on a television show and later wrote a book titled From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir (1999).

She has also stated that she was devastated by the death of her longtime therapist, whose work helped to make the separation from Pitt easier. Aniston has said that her relationship with Pitt, which she does not regret, was "seven very intense years together" and that "it was a beautiful, complicated relationship." Since the couple's divorce, Aniston has been romantically linked to actor Vince Vaughn, British model Paul Sculfor and singer John Mayer.

In August 2006, Aniston denied rumors that she was engaged to Vaughn or that the actor had proposed. In October 2006, gossip magazine Us Weekly quoted sources from Vaughn that the couple had broken up. In December 2006, representatives for both Aniston and Vaughn confirmed that they had indeed split up a few weeks before when Aniston visited Vaughn in London.
The intense media scrutiny of Aniston's private life continued. It was reported in April 2008 that singer John Mayer and Aniston were an item. A few weeks later, Mayer hinted the rumours were true when he told reporters "listen, this is not a scandal, this is not an issue, this is not a problem, this needs no spin control."

On August 13, 2008, the UK's Daily Mirror reported that Aniston was "dumped" by Mayer after the pair initially decided to spend some time apart before making the break official earlier this week. However, according to USmagazine.com, reports that Mayer had dumped Aniston were not true and that it was she who dumped him. A relationship expert tells USmagazine.com that Mayer's pride and ego was the reason he has been telling people he dumped Aniston. Rumors were put to rest when Mayer explained on his Myspace that he had ended the relationship because "[he doesn't] want to waste somebody's time if something's not right". On October 11, 2008, Mayer and Aniston reunited for a dinner at romantic restaurant, Il Mulino. Since then, Aniston and Mayer have been reported to reunite quite a few times, once to celebrate Mayer's 31st birthday. She has since confirmed on Oprah, she is again dating John Mayer.

Career

Aniston moved to Hollywood and was cast in her first television role in 1990, starring as a regular on the short-lived series Molloy and in the TV movie Camp Cucamonga. She also co-starred in Ferris Bueller, a television adaptation of the 1986 hit movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The series, however, was quickly canceled. Aniston then appeared in two more failed television comedy shows, The Edge and Muddling Through, and guest-starred on Quantum Leap, Herman's Head, and Burke's Law. After the string of canceled shows, along with her appearance in the critically derided 1992 horror film, Leprechaun, Aniston considered giving up acting. Aniston's plans changed, however, after auditioning for Friends, a sitcom that was set to debut on NBC's 1994–1995 fall line-up. The producers of the show originally wanted Aniston to audition for the role of Monica Geller, but she persuaded them that she was better suited for the role of Rachel Green. She was cast in the role and played the character from 1994 until the show ended in 2004.

The program was successful and Aniston, along with her co-stars, gained wide renown among television viewers. Her hairstyle at the time, which became known as the "Rachel", was widely copied. Aniston received a salary of one million dollars per episode for the last two seasons of Friends, as well as five Emmy nominations (two for Supporting Actress, three for Lead Actress), including a win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. According to the Guinness World Book of Records (2005), Aniston (along with her female costars) became the highest paid TV actress of all time with her $1 million-per-episode paycheck for the tenth season of Friends.

Jennifer Aniston was cast in a Heineken commercial which was later banned due to branding issues. Later, in 1994, Microsoft invited Aniston, along with Friends co-star Matthew Perry, to shoot a 30-minute promotional advertisement for their new operating system, Windows 95. She gained critical acclaim for her performances in The Object of My Affection (1998), a comedy drama about a girl who falls for a gay man, and in the low-budget 2002 film, The Good Girl, directed by Miguel Arteta, playing an unglamorous cashier in a small town. The latter film opened in relatively few theaters—under 700 in total—taking $14M in the U.S. box office. In late 2005, Aniston appeared in two major studio films, Derailed and Rumor Has It.