Jennifer Aniston and the truth about ‘all the good stuff’ she uses to look fab in her fifties

At the age 56, Jennifer Aniston is back on our screens next week for series 4 of the Apple TV show The Morning Show. She looks fabulous, so fabulous that we (women over 50 and 60) want to know exactly how she got there. In the past two years, we have seen the emergence of the era of the older leading lady – from Demi Moore to Naomi Watts, and Kris Jenner – all looking fabulous with none of the previous tell-tale signs of a facelift (which used to make women look like a cross between a cat and a chipmunk).

Gone are the balloon cheeks or the crossed-eyed Dr Spock expression many ladies who lunch sport, having had one Botox injection too many. In 2025, it’s about looking natural, the emphasis being more on the “looking” than “natural”. Aniston sits firmly in the middle of an ageing continuum. She looks healthy, tight-skinned and glowy. As one of the most successful and long-working Hollywood stars, Aniston is the ageing barometer of my generation.

She recently addressed the subject in an interview with her 49-year-old French co-star Marion Cotillard, who praised Aniston for her healthy attitude to ageing. “I think Jen Aniston is such an inspiring woman, and it makes me feel good about entering this new decade,” said Cotillard.

“When it’s kind of scary sometimes, I think about all these women that I admire and who have evolved and aged so gracefully, accepting what [it means to age], because you have no choice but to accept this. I’m not trying to fight against it because it’s useless. It’ll never get you anywhere.”

Aniston replied, “I think it all starts with how we love our bodies and love where we are.” Then the bit we’d been waiting for. “I’m not going to say I don’t get the facials and the lasers and all that good stuff,” she said. I mean, I’m maintained. I’m not going to just go down and let these grey hairs take over. So it’s perspective and also knowing that this is our one body. It’s a mindset.”

What exactly is all that “good stuff?” you ask? I have some experience myself having sacrificed my face in the name of science a few years back to Dr Maryam Zamani, a very popular oculoplastic surgeon with a busy practice off of the Kings Road.

Being too chicken to go under the knife to address my eye bags and drooping eyelids (she suggests an operation called blepharoplasty, which I may consider when I can’t see anymore), I did the “tweakments” she deemed most efficacious. This included Morpheus8 (a very uncomfortable treatment of microneedling with radiofrequency that essentially pierces the skin to generate new collagen) and a broad light laser that literally sands off wrinkles, sun and age spots. She also injected Botox and some filler into my very deep frown line, eye area and neck.

Zamani also added the magic bullet that is tretinoin to my nightly routine (if you don’t know, really? This is essentially Retin A, a prescription cream that shaves off the top layer of skin and also stimulates collagen. Of all the topicals out there that give you bouncy, glass skin, this is the only real player).

To this cocktail, I added growth factors, ie a stem cell-rich serum which is excreted from the umbilical cord lining of red deer (says the marketing prose). This supposed youth elixir comes in a little dropper bottle from the Singapore-based brand Calecim (it’s made by a biotech company). It is often combined with microneedling for deeper penetration.

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Six weeks after doing all of the above, a male friend spontaneously commented that I looked “20 years younger”. (I had also quit alcohol; sobriety should be bottled for anti-ageing benefits.)

”Hollywood has put unrealistic expectations on women and how they age because we all know at a certain point that we become invisible, which is not fair”, Zamini says. “But we are seeing role models emerging like Aniston and also Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda who look fabulous.”

For maintenance, myself and many of my midlife gang do “BBL” administered by Dr Zainab Laftah of the Sarah Chapman Skinesis Clinic. This painless new laser removes fine lines, sunspots and pigmentation from the face and also chest and hands (which are dead giveaways).

Skincare-wise, I still can’t find anything better than Augustinus Bader, which really works. I love it, but I can’t afford it (their supreme collection comes in at £1,355). Currently, all the rage and next up on my to-try list are salmon or trout sperm injections. The technical name is Croma PolyPhil Polynucleotides, which apparently really plump our skin.

All of this means we older women are ageing better. We also eat better, we exercise, we meditate, we sleep, we take HRT (I see women slathering it on like sunscreen because of the plumping effect on the skin). Some women also inject GLP-1s to lose that post-menopausal fat, which makes their faces sag. Enter the new post Munjaro lifts.

But no matter how well you feel, it only takes one person to mumble “you look tired” to reconsider the idea of ageing naturally.

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Either way, it’s a minefield. On one end, we have “deep plane face lifts” (more on that later). On the other hand, older actors (like Jamie Lee Curtis) let it all hang out on screen. Curtis’s view is deal with it. “I’ve been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex, who’ve disfigured themselves,” she said. “I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want.”

When you see celebrities who look like they’ve “un-aged,” it’s usually a combination of things rather than one secret treatment,” says Dr Nima Mahmoodi of Remedi London. “There are surgical options like deep plane facelifts, which reposition not just the skin but the underlying muscle and fat pads. When done well, they avoid the “pulled” look of older facelifts and can give a very natural lift, though they’re still major surgery with downtime.”

Surgery alone doesn’t explain the “freakishly young” appearance that is cropping up increasingly regularly. “What really sets some celebrities apart is layering: regenerative injectables like polynucleotides or sunekos to restore skin quality, energy-based devices like HIFU or laser to tighten and resurface, plus stem-cell–derived exosomes, growth factors, and IV wellness protocols.”

All of which costs thousands and thousands of pounds, which my generation is happy to pay if they can.

This new world of creams and cosmetics targeted at the thriving silver economy is booming business too. According to Statista, the global market for anti-ageing products was valued at around $47bn in 2023 and is expected to increase to nearly $80bn by the beginning of the next decade.

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This trend was not lost on Pamela Anderson when she appeared on the runway at Paris Fashion Week last autumn wearing absolutely no makeup. You would have thought she’d grown a tail given the media reaction, but she had a trick up her sleeve.

Look at Ilia Beauty, which is the darling of both Jenifer Aniston and Pamela Anderson. Both have publicly praised the brand beloved by older women because of its clean profile and good quality, nourishing skin and makeup products that promote glowy, mature skin. It’s the go-to brand for Notting Hill ladies of my age (because of the store Oh My Cream, which sells it).

Anderson’s naked skin, much complimented for its tone and clarity, was an ad campaign all of its own (they say) because no sooner had she gone facially commando, she announced that she (with her two sons) had acquired Sonsie Skin, an American clean skincare brand.

I have to say the marketing people are doing a really good job. They have persuaded us (me) that if we just keep using: Augustinus Bader, Ilia Beauty, Jones Road and now Sonsie Skin, all of which are targeted at “mature” women, our skin will be so plumped up, so glassy and youthful looking that we can skip the Plane lifts, the lasers and placenta injections altogether and just be like them.

Most of us will not fork out for deep plane surgery (it’s embarrassing to go under the knife, I think, because it reeks of desperation), but we also don’t want to find out what happens when we stop dyeing our hair, wearing make-up or watching our weight.

Team Aniston wins the day again.