Jennifer Aniston and her mother Nancy Dow didn’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, particularly after the Friends actress’ rise to the top.
However, Nancy did instil in Jennifer three life lessons that she has carried with her ever since.
Healthy living
“I was never allowed to have a sugary piece of anything, and I was also served spelt bread,” the Emmy winner told People. “I grew up in one of those holistic households…so I’ve sort of lived by that.”
Nancy would also constantly remind her daughter to hydrate, which has served her well in her partnership with SmartWater.
“My mom sort of drilled into me the importance of drinking water since I was a kid, but I guess really more in my late teens,” she explained. “I‘ve become so hyper-aware of people who don’t drink water now because I’ve always been such a water drinker.”
© Instagram“I have girlfriends that just can’t drink water, they just don’t like the taste of it,” she added. “It’s like, ‘It’s water. It’s just water,‘ and I constantly say, ‘You have to hydrate. You must hydrate.‘”
Nancy also gave beauty advice to her daughter when Jennifer was growing up. “She was also the one who taught me to put on face cream and eye cream,” the 56-year-old said.
Sadly, Nancy passed away in 2016 at the age of 79; she had enjoyed a successful acting career particularly in the ’60s, with starring roles in The Beverly Hillbillies and The Wild Wild West.
A fraught relationship
© Getty ImagesThe star split from Jennifer’s father John Aniston when their daughter was just nine, and found it difficult to adjust to life as a single mother.
“She was a model, and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like,” the 56-year-old told The Sunday Telegraph in 2018.
“I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for, and it was something that really resonated with me: this little girl just wanting to be seen and wanting to be loved by a person who was too occupied with things that didn’t quite matter.”
© GettyNancy released her memoir, From Mother and Daughter to Friends, in 1999, which explored their tense relationship – prompting Jennifer to cut ties completely.
After her split from Brad Pitt in 2005, the pair reconciled and remained in each other’s lives until Nancy’s passing.
“I forgave my mom,” Jennifer told Allure in 2022. “It’s important. It’s toxic to have that resentment, that anger. I learned that by watching my mom never let go of it. I remember saying, ‘Thank you for showing me what never to be.‘”
© InstagramNancy’s lessons surrounding diet and exercise have never left Jennifer, yet in recent years the A-lister has opted to engage in low-impact workouts rather than pushing her body too hard.
“I always thought that you have to push your body; it has to be an hour and a half; it has to be, ‘no pain, no gain,‘ and all of those things that we’ve been told and it’s just not the case,” she told Today.
“You don’t have to break your body or spend hours in the gym…Remember, we want this body to carry us through the rest of our lives, through a second and third act, so we need it to be on our side.”
To learn more about Jennifer’s workout routine, watch below…
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