It seems it’s time to set the record straight: Jennifer Aniston is in no way a failed actress. The latest swipe at the state of Aniston’s career comes from Rupert Everett, who while discussing how film executives favor certain actors and continue to employ them despite repeated box office failure, told BBC Radio, “OK, something will go wrong, like Jennifer Aniston will have one too many total flops, but she’s still a member of that club. And she will still manage to … like a star forming in the universe, things will swirl around her and it will suddenly solidify into another vital tasteless rom-com, a little glitter next to the Crab Nebula.”
That’s some statement from the star of ‘The Next Best Thing,’ which grossed just $15 million domestically on a budget of $25 million. But the thing is, while many of her more recent films haven’t exactly lit up the box office, Aniston hasn’t had a true “flop” (that is, a film that hasn’t recouped its cost) in nearly a decade. The same cannot be said for Everett or, well, the majority of Hollywood stars these days. While she’s not tossing out mega-hits Will Smith-style, Aniston may well be among the more reliable performers in Tinseltown.
Everett certainly isn’t the only person out there deriding Aniston’s movie career as a failed one. The same tabloid articles that paint her as a lonely cat lady go to great pains to make sure readers know her last few films haven’t performed the way many of her earlier endeavors — like ‘Bruce Almighty’ ($242 million, domestic), ‘The Break-Up’ ($118 million) and ‘Marley & Me’ ($143 million) — did.
How sad for her, right? ‘The Bounty Hunter’ only made $67 million in the U.S. and ‘The Switch’ tanked at $27 million. And she spent Christmas surrounded by incredible wealth and friends alone. All she wants is to be loved, and even moviegoers have turned their backs on her. Poor Jennifer Aniston: she doesn’t even have a successful career anymore to console her forever broken heart.
It makes for a great story, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what it is.
It might interest Everett and others to know that ‘Bounty Hunter’ cost only $40 million to produce, and with a foreign gross roughly equal to its domestic haul, Aniston’s miserable failure made $136 million worldwide. ‘The Switch,’ Aniston’s summer comedy with Jason Bateman, found itself in a similar, albeit on a smaller scale, situation, with a total gross of $47 million on a $19 million budget.
(Everett’s last film, the $8 million British flick ‘Wild Target,’ made, um, $108,589 domestically and just under $3 million in foreign markets. People in glass houses …)
Everyone seems to conveniently forget that ‘Marley & Me’ was released barely two years ago and that the actress was a major draw for 2009’s ensemble comedy ‘He’s Just Not That Into You,’ a $40 million film that earned just under $94 million here and another $84 million abroad.
None of the above is meant to say the films were any good or particularly memorable, but it is misleading to declare them full-on failures. Because she’s headlined her share of box office smashes, when one of her films disappoints, it’s just easier to pile on the actress and declare it a bomb than to call it what it really is — a letdown.
The last Aniston movie that can truly be called a flop is 2001’s ‘Rock Star,’ a film that cost $57 million but only grossed $19 million worldwide. (Her 2009 indie ‘Management’ did dismally at the box office, but budget information for the film was unavailable.) ‘Derailed’ grossed nearly three times its small budget, and ‘Rumor Has It’ eventually pulled in north of $88 million worldwide.
Even if Aniston’s appeal is limited (it’s true that she’s resisted moving too far from her rom-com comfort zone), the actress has been smart to stick with low-to-medium budget fair that she can almost always push into the black. That, Mr. Everett, is why Jennifer Aniston continues to land movie roles: she has proven herself to be reliably profitable, and that’s not something every actor can say.
Consider the case of Matt Damon, an actor beloved by many. No one is out shaming Damon whenever his films under-perform, but he has served up more true-blue bombs in the last few years than he’s had hits. The Clint Eastwood-directed ‘Hereafter’ received a chilly reception at the box office, pulling in just $32 million of its $50 million production budget; ‘Bourne’ director Paul Greengrass’ ‘Green Zone’ tanked, recouping just $35 million (domestic) of its $100 million cost; and ‘All the Pretty Horses’ earned $18 million worldwide on a $57 million budget. Outside of his trusty cash-cow ‘Bourne’ and ‘Ocean’s’ franchises, Damon, like Aniston, has also starred in a slew of profitable-if-middling performers, including ‘Invictus,’ ‘The Informant,’ ‘The Good Shepherd’ and ‘Syriana.’
Damon is, however, also a twice Oscar-nominated actor (and screenplay winner) whose films tend to receive acclaim even when then they don’t rake in major cash. And when he hits one out of the park — as he did with ‘The Departed,’ ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and the current ‘True Grit’ — he does it right, yielding both critical raves and box office dollars. Aniston is an easier target than Damon because, with the exception of ‘The Good Girl’ and ‘Friends with Money,’ she rarely finds herself bathing in glowing reviews.
Oh, and then there’s also a little known actress named Angelina Jolie, whose films mostly tend to rake it in at the box office. The press just loves to compare Aniston to her for some reason. You see, its apparently fun to call Aniston a failure every time Jolie scores a hit (a la ‘Salt,’ ‘Wanted’ and ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’) because five long years ago Angie might have (or might not have) had something to do with the end of Aniston’s marriage to Brad Pitt. And because no one bothers to actually check the facts before saying or writing something (here’s lookin’ at you, Rupert), it’s easy to perpetuate the myth that Aniston’s career is flailing when it’s really far from it.
