Sandra Bullock said she and Friends star Jennifer Aniston started out in Hollywood at a time when “no one wanted the ladies to be friends” and female actors were meant to see each other only as competition.
Speaking to Vanity Fair for a story on Aniston, Bullock reflected on their relationship and how it began.
They first met about 15 years ago at a mutual friend’s wedding, immediately struck up a friendship and “spent the night trading shots and notes”.
“We’re just like, ‘Oh my God, we need to meet and cut loose,’” Bullock recalled. “And we did.”
They debuted in Hollywood around the same time. After playing smaller roles in films and TV series in the late 1980s, both landed breakthrough parts in 1994 – Bullock in Speed and Aniston in Friends.
“We were from that time in the business where no one wanted the ladies to be friends – it was about pitting everyone against each other,” Bullock recalled. “We were told we weren’t supposed to do that – meaning like and respect and honour each other.”
The actors now related to each other not just as women working in the same industry, but over shared frightening experiences.
In June 2014, a stalker named Joshua Corbett broke into Bullock’s Los Angeles home with a love letter, leading the Oscar-winner to hide inside a cupboard to call 911.
This year, a man named Jimmy Wayne Carwyle was arrested after he drove his car through the gate of Aniston’s Bel Air home.
He had allegedly been harassing her with voicemail, email, and social media messages for two years.
“People are out of their minds. Who wants to put that energy out there,” Aniston said, adding that her security team was “not glamorous in any way. It’s a necessity”.
“It makes me think, ‘Do I really have to go outside and navigate the world?'” Bullock said. “There’s the cases where they got into the house, the cases where they’re outside the house, the cases where you’re on a film set and they figured out where you are, and the cases that no one hears about.
“It’s ongoing. It’s not a one-off. And it does create a mindset where your home also unfortunately becomes your fortress.”
The two actors now work together to make sure they go out of their houses. “There’s a motivation of going, ‘Okay, we need to go somewhere. Where are we going?’” said Bullock.
Aniston revealed in the same story that she was also close friends with Gwyneth Paltrow. “Ironically, I went to her and Brad’s engagement party,” Aniston told the magazine.
Paltrow was engaged to Brad Pitt in the 1990s and Aniston was married to him for five years until their divorce in 2005.
She was asked if she ever talked about Pitt with Paltrow. “Oh, of course,” she responded. “How can we not? We’re girls.”
