'Friends' Star Jennifer Aniston Had Same Waitress Job As Rachel Green

May 20, 2024

As fans of the hit sitcom Friends will recall, the character of Rachel Green got her start waiting tables at the iconic Central Perk coffee shop before landing her dream job at Ralph Lauren. As it turns out, the actor who played the beloved character, Jennifer Aniston, had a very similar career path to Rachel before starring in the hit series.

Speaking to InStyle back in 2019, The Morning Show star opened up about the early days of her post-Friends fame, revealing that, like Rachel Green, she had previously worked as a waitress in the Big Apple. “I was such a grown-up by then,” Aniston recalled. “I had moved away from home. I had been on six failed television shows. I waitressed for years in New York before I got anything.”

However, that wasn’t her only pre-Friends gig. The actor went on to share that she also once worked as a telemarketer selling time-shares in the Poconos. “I didn't make one sale,” she added. “I was terrible at it. I was like, ‘Why do we have to call people at dinnertime?’” Before that, Aniston “cut hair for 10 bucks a head” in junior high. “I cut my dad’s hair, and he was on a soap opera [Days of Our Lives]. But then he admitted to me 15 years ago that he would go in and have the hairdresser on set clean it up.”

Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images

This isn’t the only time Aniston has reminisced on her early Friends fame in recent years, having previously revealed that she once stole a Monica Geller dress from co-star Courteney Cox’s dressing room, disclosed how she was originally cast in the hit ’90s sitcom, and recalled the first major purchase she made with her Friends paycheck — which she still regrets to this day.

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