Even though I’m letting the Cake wash over me, I still kind of wonder if Jennifer Aniston is playing one part of her Oscar campaign correctly: she really seems to be answering too many questions about the tabloids, her tabloid persona and “the lies.” While Aniston has always seemed a little too eager to engage in that side of the gossip industry, I wonder if that’s the right play for her Oscar campaign. Isn’t the end result that she looks like the same old tabloid queen, the all-gossip-no-substance Miss Lonelyhearts? Shouldn’t she shut those conversations down in favor of discussing her work, how she wants to be a dramatic actress, etc? So, Aniston covers the new issue of InStyle, and guess what she talks about? The tabloids. Whether or not she’s pregnant. Ugh. Some highlights:

On the tabloids: “I realize they need to sell magazines, but it’s really getting old. What kills me is when friends send me pictures they’ve taken at a newsstand. One magazine says, ‘Desperate and alone,’ and the other one says, ‘She’s eloped!’ I mean, at least consult. Don’t make yourself look like an idiot. I’m going to be 50 and they’re still gonna be saying, ‘She’s pregnant!'”

If she could write her own tabloid headline, what would it be? “Oh, that’s a tough one. That should be a Justin question. Wait a sec. How’s this? ‘When I’m pregnant and married, I will let you know.’ Not a tabloid publication. Not Bulls–t Times or Crapass Bulls–t Times Weekly. They will not be telling you. And by the way, stop stealing my thunder! Let me have the fun of telling that story.”

Her wedding plans: “There’s a big discussion in our house right now: Do you just do it and say screw it? Or do you try desperately to get away with [a secret ceremony] where you don’t have any fun because you’re hiding in a cave somewhere? If we could do it without all the buzzing and the noise…It can be done. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Being in her 40s: “It may be harder to shed those extra pounds, but all of this stuff,” she says while circling her head with her fingers, “is fabulous. Just thinking about the girl I was at 20-something or even 30-something—there were so many questions, so many worries, so much wasted brain space on things that really don’t matter.”

Turning 40 was the turning point: “I’m a late bloomer. I mean, it’s no secret: I’ve had some challenging companionship. I think hitting a wall with that really kind of [helped me grow]. I found a great therapist. Not to sound too ‘woo woo,’ but I think the self-love piece was really important. And spending a lot of time alone. Having time to ask myself why there was such toxicity in my immediate space at times. Why would I attract that instead of light?”

Robert Downey Jr. introduced her to Justin Theroux: “I was on vacation in Kauai with [David Arquette] and [Courteney Cox] and my friend [Mandy Ingber], who’s also my yoga teacher. Robert was on the island shooting Tropic Thunder. One night he came over for dinner and brought his friend Justin Theroux. He was the screenwriter on Tropic Thunder. I had never heard of him…I remember thinking, ‘Isn’t he hot?’ But he was very hidden. As he says, for him, ‘It’s winter from the waist down no matter what season it is,’ so he was wearing black jeans, combat boots, glasses, and a fedora.” At that point in time, Aniston recalls, she was “soooo single. But it was never [a romantic thing]. I just thought, ‘What a lovely guy.’ He was funny. But he was actually really quiet. I later came to find out that he was just exhausted because he had been writing nonstop, like a little hamster on a wheel. This was his one night off, and he had no personality, but he was very sweet and very overdressed. I was like, ‘You must be really shvitzing up a storm in those jeans and combat boots.'”

Aniston plays around with the timeline of her relationship: “We just became very good friends, as did everyone on that [Wanderlust] set. We didn’t start dating until the following summer, after he went through a breakup. All of a sudden it was just like, ‘Well, you’re one of my closest friends and…’ Somehow I just saw him in a different light once he was available. If I haven’t gotten wiser about relationships, then I should be kicked out of life school because I’ve had some really good training.”

[From E! News]

Well well well. I’m not going to cite all of our old stories, but Jennifer is telling some lies about when she and Justin got together and whether there was actually some overlap between her relationship with Justin and Justin’s long-term relationship with Heidi Bivens. Even if you don’t believe the sources who claimed Justin and Jennifer were having sex all the time during the filming of Wanderlust, Justin and Jennifer were seen publicly together on dates in the spring, not the summer, and Heidi Bivens was very clear about when she moved out of the apartment she shared with Justin in NYC. There was an overlap.

Photos courtesy of InStyle.