The actress Jennifer Aniston – best known, despite her efforts to build a movie career, as Rachel from Friends – has been immortalised on the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard, joining nearly two and a half thousand actors, film-makers, musicians, presenters and other entertainers.
Hundreds of people spilled onto the street outside the exclusive W hotel near the junction known as Hollywood & Vine, where the two streets that make up the famous Walk of Fame intersect.
The honour is ostensibly bestowed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, but it’s essentially bought by the studios to promote their films; it’s no coincidence that this ceremony came just two days before the release of her latest comedy.
That’s not to say that the actress doesn’t deserve the accolade; the fact that fans crowded not just onto the street but onto surrounding balconies and roofs, is a sign of how popular she is with the public and a list of her productions – including The Good Girl, Friends with Money, Marley & Me and a short film she’s directed in support of breast cancer relief – showed how prolific she has been since Friends. Despite rising to fame on one of TV’s most successful sitcoms, on both sides of the Atlantic, the film-camera motif in the middle of her star denotes that she is being honoured for her big-screen work.
Speaking at the ceremony, her friend and co-star from last year’s Just Go With It, Adam Sandler, told the tale of a young Greek girl, called “Jeneefer Anistonufelufekus” who made it in Hollywood, “putting the whore into Horrible Bosses” – say it out aloud. “She prayed for three things: to have everyone in the entire world be fascinated with her hair, to one day star in a movie about an evil leprechaun who kills people, and most importantly, receive a star on the prestigious Hollywood Walk of Fame. Well, today, Jennifer, the trifecta is here.”
She also received praise from two of her co-stars in her latest film, Kathryn Hahn and Malin Akerman, who – while her message was heartfelt – betrayed the fact that she is clearly more entertaining when professional writers have prepared her script. Jennifer Aniston is not good at everything, she began. She’s not got at being selfish or being a bad actress, for example. Her boyfriend Justin Theroux – another co-star in her new comedy – was also among the guests.
“I can’t explain to you how surreal this moment is,” Aniston began her acceptance speech, before stopping herself as she related how she’d often walked the streets of Hollywood, realising it had a double entendre. As she spoke, off the cuff, a lucky group of Hollywood tourists, who happened to be driving past on an open-topped bus, received a wave from the actress. It’s not every Hollywood bus-tour that can offer that kind of item of its itinerary. The actress ended, of course, by plugging her new film, before spending about ten minutes signing autographs and posing for photographs for fans.