Unnervingly, it’s now been almost 30 years since Jennifer Aniston’s initial ascent to household name status as a cast member on Friends.
And while Rachel Green will probably always be her most famous role, Jen has also clocked up a number of big-screen appearances in comedies like The Break-Up, Along Came Polly and Marley & Me – not to mention, more recently, her acclaimed performance in the drama The Morning Show.
But there are also a number of credits on her vast CV you might well not have heard of, including roles which have seen her being stalked by a vengeful leprechaun, locking lips with co-star Courteney Cox and even attempting to restore some order on South Park.
Here are 12 of Jennifer Aniston’s past roles that may well have passed you by…
Mac And Me (1988)
Kicking things off on a bizarre note, Jen’s very first on-screen credit was in the critically-panned alien film Mac And Me, appearing as an extra in a truly wild dance sequence in a McDonald’s (including a cameo from Ronald McDonald himself).
See if you can spot the then-18-year-old future Emmy winner in the video above.
Ferris Bueller (1990)
No, not that one.
Four years after the teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off charmed audiences in the 1980s, a short-lived TV spin-off debuted in the US.
Jennifer played the titular hero’s teenage sister Jeanie in the show, a role originated by Jennifer Grey, who later went on to achieve huge success in the film Dirty Dancing.
Leprechaun (1993)
Leprechaun is not a film Jennifer Aniston likes to shout about having been a part of – in fact, in 2021 she admitted her fears that it might have been a career-killer for her.
Admittedly, it’s not tough to see why.
Part B-movie comedy parody, part actual horror film, Leprechaun sees Warwick Davis in the title role of… well… a leprechaun who seeks revenge on a young couple he believes has stolen his gold.
After Jen’s rise to fame in Friends, Leprechaun gained something of a cult following, though she definitely does not count herself among its fans.
South Park (1999)
Jen was apparently an early fan of the adult cartoon show, after being turned onto it by her then-husband Brad Pitt.
With Friends still on the air and hugely popular, her voice role in South Park was a bit of a risky move, with her episode featuring the explicit language and near-the-knuckle (and often offensive) humour that the long-running series has always been associated with.
The Good Girl (2002)
Let’s be honest, we all love a bit of Jen, but her big screen outings haven’t always been the most warmly received, have they?
One big exception is the indie film The Good Girl, in which the star plays a bored supermarket worker whose humdrum life gets shaken up when she enters into a romance with a much younger new co-worker, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Jennifer was hailed by critics as the stand-out performance in the film, which was one of Jake’s first after his breakout role in Donnie Darko a year earlier.
Derailed (2005)
For Jen’s first big screen outing after Friends came to an end in 2004, she definitely stepped outside of her comfort zone. She joined Clive Owen in this crime thriller about two strangers who begin an affair after meeting on a train, though her character has more than a few secrets up her sleeve which emerge as the action-packed drama unfolds.
Unfortunately, the film was mauled by critics upon its release, and currently holds an unenviable “rotten” score on the review site Rotten Tomatoes.
Friends With Money (2006)
Jen takes the lead alongside an impressive cast in this black comedy, playing the least wealthy member of an otherwise-affluent group of friends.
It’s strange that this is such an overlooked addition on Jen’s filmography, as not only was her performance praised, she appears in the film alongside Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Oscar nominees Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener.
Dirt (2007)
The cast of Friends repeatedly cropped up in one another’s latter-day projects, with the Courteney Cox-led drama Dirt being one such example.
Much was made in the media about Jen’s cameo in the season one finale, not just because she was reunited with her former co-star, but also because the two shared a kiss in one scene, in which it emerged their magazine journalist characters were former lovers.
Cougar Town (2010)
See what we mean about the Friends cast?
A few years after her scene-stealing moment in Dirt, Jen shared the screen with Courteney once again, in her suburban sitcom Cougar Town (on a sidenote: If you’ve never checked out Cougar Town, we can’t recommend it highly enough).
Jennifer played Courteney’s neurotic character’s therapist in one episode, stepping out of her usual box with a role that put us more in mind of Phoebe Buffay than Rachel Green.
Cake (2014)
The closest Jennifer Aniston has ever come to Oscar buzz came in 2014 with the release of Cake, in which the star plays a former lawyer who is struggling with a chronic pain condition following a car accident that killer her son.
Jen was nominated for a Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award for her role, though the Academy Award nom eluded her in the end.
The Yellow Birds (2018)
Quite how this film passed us by in 2018 we’re not sure. The Yellow Birds focusses on two soldiers fighting in the Iraq war, with Jennifer and screen icon Toni Collette playing their mothers.
She told Entertainment Weekly around the release: “War movies aren’t usually my thing; I find them very hard to watch. [But] the way this script read, and the vision that Alex had — it was really connecting into the humanity of the soldiers; the parents that are left behind waiting, counting the minutes; the loss of innocence.”
Dumplin’ (2018)
Arriving on Netflix around the same period as the omnipresent Sandra Bullock thriller Bird Box and guaranteed Oscar nominee Roma, Dumplin’ didn’t quite get the attention it deserved when it debuted in December 2018, which is a shame as it’s a truly joyous film.
Mixing together everything you want in a film (an underdog story, drag queens and the music of Dolly Parton), Jen plays a former beauty queen turned pageant runner, who struggles to understand her teenage daughter.
