Jennifer Aniston has celebrated turning 55 and fans are gobsmacked at the milestone.
The actor shared a montage with an important message, which included a nostalgic Friends throwback, as fans took to social media to wish her well.
‘Happy 28th birthday, Jen!!’ wrote ejscott106, joking that the Friends star looks half her age and simply cannot be 55.
‘Jennifer Aniston just turned 55 today. No way she can be 55,’ wrote Wes Reynolds, while Liam Ames chimed in with: Happy birthday to my crush Jennifer Anniston how is this woman 55? She looks amazing.’
The Morning Show actor shared a heartwarming video montage of her throughout the years to celebrate the big birthday milestone, in which it becomes apparent she’s hardly changed at all.
Alongside the images and footage, she simply commented with the word, ‘Grateful,’ and copied out a poem by Stanley Kuntiz called The Layers.
Jennifer in 1995 (Picture: Getty Images)
She has hardly aged at all (Picture: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
The poem reflects on the passage of time, and how it changes us. It also talks of a ‘scattering tribe’ and the ‘manic dust’ of friends.
It reads: ‘How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses? / In a rising wind / the manic dust of my friends / those who fell along the way / bitterly stings my face.’
It then talks about carrying on and going ‘wherever I need to go’ and ends with: ‘I am not done with my changes.’
Fans were in bits at the poem, as user kkmchale commented: ‘Why did this just make me cry? Lol happy birthday 💗’
Instagram follower shereecommerford agreed, and wrote: ‘Wow, this makes me cry ! Thank you 🙏🏼’
‘Jennifer you are making me cry,’ chimed in aangnyeong.
In the selection of clips, one shows Jennifer as Rachel Green in Friends episode, The One Where They All Turn Thirty, which aired in 2001.
Jennifer Aniston has taken to social media with a beautiful message to mark her 55th birthday (Picture: Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
She posted this iconic Friends moment (Picture: NBC)
The Friends actor lost a lifelong friend when co-star Matthew Perry died last year aged 54, so this will surely be an emotional milestone for her.
A spoken word poem by eviewhy called ‘the thing about birthdays’ also overlaid the footage, talking about how although we age, we are still the years that came before.
On birthdays, it says, we expect to feel our new age, but we don’t. It’s because we are still 19 when we say something silly, 29 other days and when we crumble and cry, we are just a baby again.
‘The way we grow older is like an onion, each year inside the next one, and our birthdays are just a celebration of the years which came before and a welcoming of the next,’ it concludes.
Jennifer shared an important message about getting older (Picture: Ronald Siemoneit/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Jennifer’s friend and co-star Matthew Perry died in October (Picture: Ron Davis/Getty Images)
The other clips show Jennifer posing in photoshoots, sipping on tea, smiling at the camera in a series of small moments, and in various pictures over the years from childhood to now.
On the morning of Perry’s death, Jennifer – who starred opposite Perry, aka Chandler Bing in the US sitcom – had texted him.
She later revealed he was ‘happy and healthy’ before his death in October.
‘He was happy — that’s all I know. I was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty. He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling. He was happy,’ she said.
‘…I want people to know he was really healthy, and getting healthy. He was on a pursuit. He worked so hard. He really was dealt a tough one.’
‘I miss him dearly. We all do. Boy, he made us laugh really hard,’ she told Variety.
Perry had opened up throughout his life in the spotlight about his struggle with addiction, hoping that in doing so he could help others.
He once said: ‘When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned – I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.
‘Addiction is far too powerful for anyone to defeat alone. But together, one day at a time, we can beat it down.’
