For a generation of TV audiences, Jennifer Aniston will always be remembered as the iconic Rachel Green from the beloved sitcom Friends. With her signature hairstyle, comedic timing, and charm, Aniston became a pop culture phenomenon during the show’s 10-season run. However, while Friends brought her fame and admiration, it also cast a long shadow over her acting career, one that she found difficult to escape for years.

Recently, Jennifer Aniston opened up about this personal and professional struggle — and the movie role that finally helped her break free from Rachel Green’s lasting legacy. Speaking during a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, the actress revealed that it wasn’t until she took on the leading role in The Good Girl (2002) that she truly began to redefine herself as an actress in the eyes of Hollywood — and even herself.

“I could not get Rachel Green off of my back for the life of me,” Aniston confessed. “I was just Rachel from Friends. And it’s on all the time! You’re just like, ‘Stop playing this f***ing show.’”

By the early 2000s, Friends was still a juggernaut, but Aniston felt the weight of typecasting pressing down on her career. Everything from Rachel’s haircut to her quirky persona had become shorthand for who Aniston was. She feared that audiences — and perhaps even herself — might never be able to see her as anything else.

That all changed when she landed the role of Justine Last in The Good Girl, a dark indie dramedy directed by Miguel Arteta. In the film, Aniston plays a discount store employee stuck in a stale marriage, who begins an affair with a younger, emotionally unstable co-worker played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The role was a drastic shift from Rachel Green — no trendy clothes, no cozy apartments in New York, no laugh tracks.

“It was The Good Girl that was the first time I got to just sort of really shed whatever this little Rachel character was,” Aniston said. “To be able to disappear into someone who was walking in those shoes was such a relief to me.”

Critics praised Aniston’s performance, noting her emotional depth and willingness to take on a character so vastly different from her previous work. Armond White, writing for The New York Times, observed that “In some ways she may feel as trapped as Justine by playing Rachel Green,” pointing out the subtle meta-layer of the role.

But for Aniston, The Good Girl was more than just critical success — it was personal validation. She admitted to feeling deep insecurity at the time, even wondering if critics were right to believe she couldn’t break out of her sitcom mold.

“I just remember the panic that set over me thinking, ‘Oh god, I don’t know if I can do this,’” she said. “Maybe everyone else is right — maybe I am just that girl in the New York apartment with the purple walls.”

In that moment, taking the role of Justine became an act of self-belief and quiet rebellion — a way for her to prove, if only to herself, that her talents extended far beyond the sitcom world. The fear, as it turned out, was worth it. The Good Girl became a critical success, and Aniston’s nuanced portrayal showed a different side of her that fans and filmmakers alike hadn’t seen before.

Since then, Jennifer Aniston has continued to stretch her range across genres. From comedic turns in films like Horrible Bosses and Murder Mystery, to her powerful performance as a morning show anchor in Apple TV’s The Morning Show, for which she received critical acclaim and awards recognition, Aniston has proven her longevity and versatility.

Still, she acknowledges that Friends will always be a part of her life — just not the whole story. In fact, she often embraces the show’s legacy and occasionally participates in fun tributes to her past. But now, she does it on her own terms, as an actress with a wide-ranging body of work and a career that has evolved far beyond one role.

“There is such a freedom in the work because you just stop giving a crap after a certain amount of time,” she laughed. “You just start doing what feels right.”

Indeed, The Good Girl was more than a movie role. For Jennifer Aniston, it marked a turning point — a chance to take back her narrative, expand her creative horizons, and remind the world, and herself, that she was never just Rachel Green.