Jennifer Aniston Spent Her First Friends Money On a 'Big Mistake'
At the peak of her career, Jennifer Aniston was one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, and she still remains one of the richest.
However, the beginnings of her professional journey were humble, as she spent her first few years acting in dubious film and TV projects, including Leprechaun (1993) and Muddling Through (1994), and appearing in minor roles, as typical for a beginner actor.
Aniston achieved fame and wealth in 1994, when she was cast for the role of Rachel Green on Friends. The sitcom became a legend, cementing the actress' success in the industry and bringing her some unbelievably large earnings.
The main cast of Friends were actually some of the highest-paid TV actors ever, with their per-episode salaries reaching $1 million, which after adjustment for inflation, would be around $1.4 million today.
Of course, the lucky six weren't making as much at the beginning of the series — and that's probably a good thing because, at first, Jennifer just didn't know what to do with the big money she was earning.
As Jennifer revealed in a recent interview, she used her first paycheck from Friends — all the way back during season one when she was 'only' getting $22,500 per episode — to buy an expensive Mercedes 280 SL convertible. She dreamed about buying that car, which was exhibited on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, for over two years. And it was a nice white car — but also so defective that it only lasted two trips.
'It was a lemon, and that's why it had been sitting there,' she said in that interview. It turned out that the manufacturing issues with that Mercedes were so bad it was impossible to drive, and the car's safety was severely undermined. 'I didn't know any better to get it checked out, so that was just a nice 25-year-old mistake,' Jen added.
Well, at least the money needed for that purchase ended up to be just a drop in the ocean, compared to what Jennifer Aniston eventually earned for the show. And we may claim the celebrity was lucky since her big mistake was just purchasing a car that should have been sent to a scrapyard — and there are examples of people committing even bigger mistakes with the money they unexpectedly earned.