Jennifer Aniston's Nighttime Habit Scared Brad Pitt During Their Marriage
Jennifer Aniston probably holds the secret to everlasting youth (though she has yet to admit it). The longtime Hollywood celebrity has been praised for her ability to seemingly defy aging. Aniston looks just as youthful in "Murder Mystery 2" as she did when she starred as Rachel in "Friends" nearly three decades earlier. How does she do it? As it turns out, Aniston has given plenty of reasons as to how she is able to age in reverse.
She credits everything from never missing her regular weekly injection of peptide to ensuring that she's exfoliating at least three of the seven days with her fresh-faced and flawless appearance. However, Aniston has also shared that health and beauty come down to the foundations of wellness, which she calls "the three pillars of health — which are diet, exercise and sleep," per an interview with PEOPLE. She explained that sleep is perhaps the most important of the three since without it, achieving the other two is even more difficult.
Interestingly enough, it's the sleep that Aniston has struggled with the most. Due to having extreme anxiety about sleep, she not only faces bouts of insomnia but also goes through periods of sleepwalking. It's the latter that was particularly scary for her ex-husband Brad Pitt when the pair were married.
Insomnia, anxiety, and sleepwalking have plagued her
In an interview with PEOPLE, Jennifer Aniston revealed insomnia and her anxiety about her inability to sleep are something she's faced since young adulthood. She joked that walking the hall to her bedroom at night was comparable to "walking the plank." Unfortunately, getting to sleep was just one nighttime hurdle; the starlet is also prone to sleepwalking.
Brad Pitt witnessed it firsthand when the couple was married from 2000 to 2005. As reported by Hello!, Pitt once divulged in an interview with Conan O'Brien that Aniston was known to wander their property while unconscious. "She gets a lot done when she's asleep. The [house] alarm was going off and I found her outside. She had to negotiate through three or four rooms," he recalled. Pitt shockingly revealed that the one time he found her outdoors, they lived on the edge of a cliff, which would have been incredibly dangerous.
He explained that while he initially found it terrifying, he did eventually get used to it. "I'll hear drawers opening and closing in the other room and I figure I'll just go back to sleep, she'll get some stuff done," the "Babylon" actor admitted — that was when Aniston wasn't talking in her sleep, which he divulged she also did frequently. Since those days, Aniston has improved her sleep habits, and it sounds like nighttime strolls are a thing of the past. This is good news because as of late, the single star has only her three dogs to keep her from a cliff's edge.
She has a multilayered sleep routine
Jennifer Aniston has a multifaceted sleep routine that speaks to all aspects of health and beauty. She spoke to Women's Health about how she takes a more focused approach to preparing for sleep than in her younger days, stating that she'll start about an hour before her 8:30 bedtime with "a wash routine, a hot hot bath with Epsom salts or magnesium salts." This is followed by meditation, after which comes a sleep meditation soundtrack if she's still having trouble nodding off. The actor has also spoken about how important it is to set yourself up for successful sleep hours ahead of when you actually want to close your eyes.
She notes that she'll stop eating, or at least snacking, around three hours before turning in. Additionally, as told to Real Simple, she's a big proponent of turning off all screens ahead of time. As for the beauty sleep part, Aniston gushed that she loves her silk pillowcases and hair oil, two things which probably help her morning routine go much smoother regardless of how many hours of ZZZs she got. "The Morning Show" actor is also a huge fan of her own haircare brand, LolaVie, which we've seen her use on Instagram after rolling out of bed in the morning, touting the benefits of being able to just scrunch and go.
Though Aniston confessed her sleep is still far from perfect, her commitment to her routine (and her results after said routine) are majorly enviable.