Jennifer

JENNIFER Aniston has shown support for her ex Justin Theroux after he welcomed a baby with his younger wife.

The actor, 54, and his other half Nicole Brydon Bloom, 32, became parents for the first time on Saturday with the arrival of their baby boy.

The couple took to Instagram to share a black and white photo of the tot lying on his dad’s chest.

They captioned it: “He’s here. We are so in love.”

As hundreds of their fans flocked to like and comment on the post, one of the well-wishers was his ex-Jennifer, 57, who showed her subtle support by pressing like on it.

The Hollywood star didn’t comment but her like shows she’s happy for her ex as he celebrates this milestone moment in his life.

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It was confirmed back in December that Justin and Nicole were expecting their first child.

The pair got married in a secret ceremony on a beach in Tulum, Mexico in March last year.

Pictures published by TMZ, showed Justin in a cream jacket and black bow tie kissing Nicole, who looked great in a backless white wedding dress.

The bride went barefoot on the sand and at one point was twirled around by smitten Justin.

The couple began dating in early 2023 but didn’t go official until December of that year.

They got engaged in Summer 2024 in Italy, while Justin was on the promo trail for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the Venice Film Festival.

The pair posed for pictures at the glitzy event and a huge diamond ring could be seen glistening on Nicole’s finger.

The actress is the daughter of late journalist David Bloom who died from a blood clot in 2003 while covering the Iraq war.

Justin and Jennifer first met in 2007, before beginning their relationship in 2011.

They married in 2015, announcing their split two years later and their subsequent divorce.

“This decision was mutual and lovingly made at the end of last year,” the two shared in a statement.

“We are two best friends who have decided to part ways as a couple, but look forward to continuing our cherished friendship.”

Justin eventually opened up to the New York Times about the divorce, saying, “The good news is that was probably the most — I’m choosing my words really carefully — it was kind of the most gentle separation, in that there was no animosity.

“Again, neither one of us is dead, neither one of us is looking to throw hatchets at each other…. It’s more like, it’s amicable.

“It’s boring, but, you know, we respected each other enough that it was as painless as it could be.”

He added: “It was heartbreaking, only in the sense that the friendship would not be the same, as far as just the day to day.

“But the friendship is shifting and changing, you know, so that part is something that we’re both very proud of.”

THERE was a time a while back when, whenever the gossip mags wrote about Jennifer Aniston, they’d always preface her name with ‘Sad’.

Sad Jen Aniston – it was like one of those three-part names like Sarah Jessica Parker or Sarah Michelle Gellar, and call me a cynic, but I’m convinced we haven’t seen the last of her.

For someone who was allegedly one of the most desirable women on earth, this must have been extremely annoying, especially when a quick roll-call inevitably followed, ticking off the regiment of men it took to award Aniston, 57, her nickname; Brad Pitt, John Mayer and Justin Theroux, for starters.

But now she is apparently planning to marry someone called Jim Curtis who she has been dating since 2025; celeb-years are like dog-years when it comes to relationships, so this is like a decade for the rest of us.

He looks like one of those men who habitually whispers ‘Rock Star’ at his reflection every morning.

He appears to have the aw-shucks charm of Pitt, the narcissism of Mayer and the pretentiousness of Theroux – without apparently having the independently successful careers of all of these, having only come to public notice when Aniston fell for his charms.

To be fair, she has rarely looked lovelier, and Curtis, 50, is wolfishly handsome.

But ‘wellness coach’ Mr Curtis – who has reportedly encouraged Aniston to ‘look inward (unfortunate suggestions of a colonoscopy there) – has a distinct whiff of snake oil about him, or rather, of woo-woo.

As a friend says: “They’ve done intensive regression therapy together, and Jen and Jim believe they met in a past life.

“They feel their souls were destined to find each other again in this timeline to complete their journey. It’s all very woo-woo and spiritual, but it absolutely works for them.”

What is woo-woo? Boiled down to its sticky residue, it’s extreme silliness masquerading as spirituality.

Woo-woo is especially attractive to disappointed women of a certain age; crystals, Goddess workshops and having a shaman on Skype speed-dial.

Gong baths, forest baths, any bath that doesn’t feature water; meditation, mindfulness, manifestation, and ‘cacao ceremonies’ where menopausal women pay other menopausal women to make them a hot chocolate in a flask while they watch the sun rise; call it a cacao ceremony and pay a hundred quid for the privilege.

Past-life regression: a couple I knew told everyone they met that in a past life, and that the woman was apparently the husband’s mother in Ancient Rome.

Their ageing whippet was also with them in Rome, which explained why, at 8,000 years old, he sometimes struggled on his daily walk.

Curtis himself was ‘regressed’ on a television talk show as a youngster and discovered that he was a Native American who was murdered.

The Wonder Of You

It’s funny how regressions bring up such dramatic results – no one’s ever just a bank clerk bored with their daily commute.

Until she saw sense and started showing off what her mama gave her again on Traitors, the most flagrantly silly face of homeland woo-woo was probably Charlotte Church, who in 2022 turned her very big house in the country into a ‘wellness retreat’ complete with a shower which the singer described as akin to a ‘very large and unusual-shaped vagina’, and a ‘womb room’.

According to planning documents, Church aimed to create ‘a system of non-hierarchical participatory democracy’ inside the property.

‘The Dreaming’ was due to open in 2022 – but was postponed due to a problem with too much sewage, which unkind souls might say is the overriding impression that one got from the whole daft enterprise.

But one can see why high-maintenance women might go for men like Mr Curtis.

After the parade of go-getting career-driven arch-narcissists Aniston has been left high and dry by, it might be refreshing to look into the limpid eyes of some smooth-talking guru who only wants to talk about The Wonder Of You.

The only Woo Woo I’ve got time for is this one: ‘Mix vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice, and garnish with a lime wedge’

On the other hand, knowing how prevalent stealth-narcissists are on the dodgy borderline where self-care meets self-advancement, there’s an equal chance that Dr Love is simply staring into your eyes in order to see his own reflection.

Falling for a snake-oil smoothie is the modern equivalent of those women who used to fall for vicars, and hang around making themselves useful in church in the hope that earthly love might eventually get a look-in.

Perhaps in a decade’s time, all this meditation, mindfulness and manifestation will be seen for what it is – old-fashioned eccentricity with a self-improving spin.

Personally, the only Woo Woo I’ve got time for is this one: ‘Mix vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice, and garnish with a lime wedge’.

JENNIFER ANISTON could be destined to marry her hypnotherapist boyfriend – as she is convinced they are soulmates who met in a past life, it is claimed.

The Friends star and wellness guru Jim Curtis are said to be so in love, they have begun scouting locations for their wedding.

Sources claim the smitten couple have also had regression therapy, designed to open up old memories, and firmly believe they knew one another in a previous incarnation.

Now, they are keen to “complete their journey” by marrying in front of loved ones at a lowkey ceremony — possibly in Europe.

An insider said: “Jen is glowing. She feels like she has waited a lifetime to find a love this easy and in a way, she believes she has.

“They’ve done intensive regression therapy together, and Jen and Jim believe they met in a past life.

“They feel their souls were destined to find each other again in this timeline to complete their journey.

“It’s all very woo-woo and spiritual, but it absolutely works for them.”

After two failed marriages — first to Brad Pitt, then Justin Theroux — Jennifer, 57, is apparently convinced she has found The One in Jim, 50.

The insider said: “Jen has never been so happy.

‘Clicked instantly’

“They’ve been discussing a small wedding away from the Hollywood circus, and Europe is top of the list.

“Jen does not like big crowds and would ­prefer an intimate ceremony with just a handful of their closest confidantes.”

The couple regularly split their time between Jen’s £15million Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles and her £12million Montecito retreat. But it appears they may be ready to move in together.

Jim has listed his £1.2million pad in Manhattan, and the pair are said to have been hunting for a luxury New York apartment.

They have been spotted looking at a block where prices start at £5million.

Jen is glowing. She feels like she has waited a lifetime to find a love this easy and in a way, she believes she has.

Insider

A source said: “They have been viewing apartments on the Upper East Side. This will be their first joint home.”

Jen and Jim have grown close amid their shared passion for spiritual healing.

But I am told they also bonded over their shared love of dogs.

Jen’s fans will be delighted to see her so happy after previous devastating break-ups.

Her 2000 marriage to actor Brad ended in divorce in 2005 amid rumours he had an affair with Angelina Jolie. After brief romances with Vince Vaughn and John Mayer, Jen wed actor Justin Theroux in 2015.

But they announced their split in 2018. Since then, the Morning Show star has kept her romantic life fiercely guarded, focusing on her career, rescue dogs and tight-knit circle of friends — until Jim walked into her life.

The master hypnotherapist, transformational coach and best-selling author built a career guiding clients through trauma and emotional recovery.

He has more than a million Instagram fans and posts daily affirmations. The pair were introduced through mutual friends in 2024. Jen was already a fan of his self-help literature and they clicked instantly, ­leading to clandestine dinner dates at their homes.

They have since been spotted on a romantic getaway at the exclusive ­Ventana Big Sur resort in Northern California and on a yacht in Majorca.

Written in stars

Instagram photos shared by Jen on Easter Sunday showed the couple embracing, and there was a snap of her with Friends co-star and pal Courteney Cox.

Jim has had a turbulent love life, too. In his book, The Stimulati Experience, he told of past struggles to “keep” a girlfriend and his divorce from his ex-wife.

According to one source, Jim was “Jen’s rock” as she was plagued by an alleged stalker who began bombarding her with messages and voicemails in 2023.

In 2025, the man crashed into the gates of her home while she was inside. He was later charged but was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.

“Jim kept her grounded throughout what was a very traumatic and stressful time,” said one source.

They have been viewing apartments on the Upper East Side. This will be their first joint home

Source

Meanwhile, Jen has been uncharacteristically open about her deep admiration for Jim. Last November, on his 50th birthday, she shared a black and white photo of them on Instagram. On her wedding finger was a diamond ring, prompting speculation she was engaged. But her team refused to comment.

Shortly after, Jen told Elle magazine Jim was “quite extraordinary”, and “very special”.

Now, it seems that with a spiritual connection written in the stars — or perhaps a past life — Jen’s search for The One is finally over.

Jennifer’s reps were asked to comment.

Victoria Pedretti was fresh out of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama when she was cast in Mike Flanagan’s acclaimed 2018 horror series, “The Haunting of Hill House.”

In her breakout role as Nell Crain, the youngest and most sensitive of five adult siblings reckoning with wounds from a childhood summer spent in a cursed home, Pedretti became the undisputed heart of “Hill House,” anchoring the show with a spellbinding performance that christened her as a scream queen. Her subsequent appearances in “The Haunting of Bly Manor” and “You” were characterized by a similar dramatic intensity, solidifying her renown in the horror genre.

But in Pedretti’s new “Forbidden Fruits,” a horror-comedy directed by Meredith Alloway making her feature debut and produced by “Jennifer’s Body” screenwriter Diablo Cody, the actor shines in all-new soapy splendor.

Set in a Dallas shopping mall, “Forbidden Fruits” revolves around an elite clique of retail employees who run a witches’ coven out of the basement of their boho boutique Free Eden. Pedretti stars alongside Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung and Alexandra Shipp.

Victoria Pedretti in the movie “Forbidden Fruits.”

(Sabrina Lantos / Independent Film Company and Shudder)

Initially asked to look at both the roles of whimsigoth physics buff Fig and the bubbly yet emotionally complex Cherry, described by Alloway as a “Texas Brigitte Bardot,” Pedretti fell hard for the latter.

“She really popped off the page,” Pedretti, 31, says on a recent Zoom interview she takes while on a sandwich run in L.A. “I entered into this glorious flow state.”

“I can’t say I’ve had any experience quite like it, where I really didn’t spend a lot of time questioning myself,” the actor says. “She kind of took over.”

That confidence was perhaps the product of Pedretti performing in two stage plays before “Forbidden Fruits” — or maybe it was the nighttime filming schedule. Either way, Pedretti says she improvised constantly and always kept swinging until somebody said, “Cut.”

The result: Pedretti in Alloway’s instant cult classic is a laugh-out-loud-funny unending well of charm, packing humor into even her most routine dialogue. In her best quotable moments, she seamlessly infuses her sometimes shrill timbre with a dash of Southern drawl. One of her most iconic facial expressions in the film is already circulating as a reaction meme online.

“I was enjoying being in this character so much, I just wouldn’t stop,” Pedretti says, adding that Alloway, who was sensitive to cast members’ interpretations of their roles, supported experimentation.

Alloway praises the Philadelphia-born Pedretti for nailing Cherry’s comedic moments yet also grounding the character in a traumatic backstory — a balancing act the director knew she was capable of after watching “Hill House.”

“I saw her in that show and I was like, ‘Who is that?’” Alloway says. “She is magnificent and so raw. I didn’t feel like I was watching someone acting. I was worried for her.”

After later watching Pedretti nail her role in “You” as Love Quinn, a wealthy, charismatic chef who hides a psychopathic nature, Alloway was convinced of her star power.

Victoria Pedretti in the movie “You.”

(John P. Fleenor / Netflix)

Cody was most familiar with Pedretti’s performance in “You,” pegging the actor as an “intense brunet” that didn’t square at first with her interpretation of Cherry as an Anna Nicole Smith type.

“Then I see the movie and I’m like, oh my God, she has that fragility,” Cody recalls. “She has that humor. She has that sexuality. She has all of it.

“Victoria brought all of those layers and I’m really blown away by her,” the Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter adds.

Cody says she wasn’t surprised that the film drew such talent. From the moment Alloway and Lily Houghton, who wrote the play “Forbidden Fruits” is based on and cowrote the film’s screenplay, brought the material to Cody and her producing partner Mason Novick, she became obsessed.

“It feels spiritually like a film that I would want to be part of my body of work,” Cody says. She remembers being especially delighted by the echoes of “Jennifer’s Body” present in Alloway and Houghton’s screenplay.

“Jennifer’s Body” was widely considered a box-office flop and critical failure upon its release in 2009 — grossing only $31 million worldwide against a $16-million budget — but in recent years has enjoyed a reappraisal as a stealth-feminist essential, reclaimed by superfans.

“I don’t think that the world was ready for these kinds of themes,” Cody says of the movie’s ideas, including the cost of toxic femininity, the nuances of female friendship and the pervasiveness of the male gaze.

When it came to promoting “Jennifer’s Body,” the producer adds, “there was a huge emphasis on trying to market it to straight men, based on Megan [Fox] being attractive, and that was not at all the point of the film, so that was frustrating.” Conversely, “Forbidden Fruits” speaks intimately to the female experience and “doesn’t attempt to pander to any other demographic.”

“The current zeitgeist is a great place for a movie like this,” she says. “This movie is for the girls, gays and theys, as they say.”

Alloway, a trained actor who worked as a film journalist before moving into directing, was struck with a similar feeling when she first discovered Houghton’s play, right around the time she was consuming copious media about women criminals, such as Tori Telfer’s 2017 book “Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History.”

“I was so entrenched in why women commit acts of crime,” Alloway said, adding that she was disappointed to find that revenge films on the subject still often revolved around men.

Picking up Houghton’s script, the director recalls feeling relieved. “Oh, this is just about women,” she says, her face brightening. “This is about women friendships, women being pitted against each other.”

In an early meeting with Houghton, Alloway told the playwright she’d like to bring a genre lens to “turn up the dial on the emotions that you feel reading the play and make them accessible to people who haven’t had these experiences — or validate people who have.”

Outside of the opportunity to work with so many other young women, Pedretti said she was drawn to “Forbidden Fruits” because of its use of style and tone.

“It asks a lot of people to try to step into a world like this one,” the actor says of the unabashedly histrionic screenplay. “And as nerve-racking as it may be to take that big swing, you gotta take the big swing.”

“She has that fragility,” says producer Diablo Cody of Pedretti. “She has that humor. She has that sexuality. She has all of it.”

(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

And swing she does: Pedretti plays up Cherry’s emotional volatility, giving her a full-bodied form of expression. The actor even did her own onscreen makeup (as did Reinhart) and collaborated heavily with costume designer Sarah Millman on Cherry’s wardrobe and styling. Plus, she performed her first topless scene — in a sequence that doesn’t involve men or even sex.

“I’m really proud of the way we use nudity to show a certain kind of unspoken comfortability among women,” she continues. “I remember always getting such a thrill at the comfort level of a girl being like, ‘We’re going to the bathroom together,’ and to me, that is that moment.”

It’s a perfect example of a scene that doesn’t try to speak to anyone except those it’s specifically written for, and one that you only get with women at the helm of a production.

Reflecting on the agency she had to shape Cherry, Pedretti says she is more inspired to explore directorial projects of her own.

“I am so interested in protecting these spaces to be positive, creative experiences for everyone involved,” she says.

Whenever Pedretti does make her feature debut behind the camera (she’s already made a short or two), perhaps Cody will pick up the phone.

JENNIFER Lopez hails the courage of actress pal Kerry Washington at a charity gala.

The singer and actress, 56, wore a blazer over a lace slip dress at the event in Los Angeles for Women’s Cancer Research Fund.

She presented the Courage Award to Kerry, 49, a cancer advocate after her mum was diagnosed with the disease.

J Lo, who was also joined by Sofia Vergara, 53, at the event, said on stage: “Kerry, you remind us that together, through sciences, support of survivors, and the relentless pursuit of answers, that real change is possible.”

J.Lo is now an independent artist after it was revealed last July that she split from her record label.

Top label BMG, also home to Kylie Minogue and Rita Ora, released her 2024 album This Is Me . . . Now — her first full project in a decade.

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But it was understood at the time to be only a one-album deal and they called it a day following disappointing sales.

A music insider said at the time: “Jennifer is obviously massively successful and talented but it’s been hard for her to find a label who she’s on the same page with.

“After her last album came out, it was decided she wouldn’t continue with BMG as it wasn’t the success she wanted.

“It only went to No 55 in the UK. But her team want to push her forward with this new music.

“She has spent a lot of time in the studio this year.”