Many celebrities are multilingual, but is Friends alumnus Jennifer Aniston one of them, and does she speak French in particular?
No, Jennifer does not speak French. She has neither mentioned knowing it nor spoken it in public, but she is bilingual. Jennifer is fluent in English, and also speaks some Greek because of Greek heritage.
Read on to learn more about Jennifer’s Greek ancestry, as well as how she feels about it!
Jennifer Is Greek from Her Father’s Side
Jennifer was born in a half-Greek household and given the name Anastasakis. Anastasakis is the name she gets from her Greek father; he was born Yiannis Anitios Anastassakis, but most people now know him as John Aniston. John changed both his name, and his daughter’s when he migrated to the United States in the 1960s.
John Aniston, and most of Jennifer’s other family, are from Chania, Crete. Jennifer hasn’t lived there for long though, she has spent most of her life in the US. She did spend a year living in Greece with her family when she was 5, but they soon moved back to the US for good.
John Aniston is also a famous actor, so Jennifer’s Greek roots extend to acting as well! John played the Kiriakis family patriarch on the soap opera Days of Our Lives for thirty years. Additionally, Telly Savalas, who starred on the legendary 1970s TV hit, Kojak, is Jennifer’s godfather! It is no surprise that Jennifer gravitated towards acting. She got into a Waldorf school when she was 6 after her family settled in New York. She later discovered acting at that same school.
Jennifer is Proud of her Greek Roots
As a child, Jennifer probably picked up some Greek from either her father or the rest of her family in Greece. She has spent time in both Crete and Athens; where she also has some to this day. Jennifer has been adamant about connecting with her Greek heritage in the past. “There’s a warmth to my family and to Greeks in general. I have friends from childhood who are still in my life today. All this keeps it real,” she has said.
Before her trip to Greece in the late 2000s, some sources claimed that she was spending time learning the Greek languages with DVDs and such so that she could speak it better once she went there. All of this further suggests that it is unlikely that Jennifer speaks French; she has always been focused more on Greek.
Jennifer Claims Her Greek Genes Keep Her Young
The public fixation with Jennifer’s beauty secrets is understandable, everyone wants to know how she looks so wonderful at her age. Some have even gone so far as to accuse her of getting work done to look younger than she is. Jennifer says her heritage has more to do with this than any procedures. “My dad is 100 percent Greek; he turned 84 and he barely has a wrinkle. And neither did my grandmother, who was 95 when she died,” she has said.
Jennifer has also added, on numerous occasions, that her regular Transcendental Meditation practice is also responsible for her youthful glow. “I started doing TM [in 2015] and that’s really changed everything. Starting your day off with that and ending with that is pretty powerful,” she has said.