'Break-Up' was 'cathartic' for Aniston

SANTA MONICA -- For Jennifer Aniston, filming the summer romantic comedy The Break-Up definitely had its surreal moments.

In the film, opening June 12, Aniston and Vince Vaughn play a couple whose relationship begins to crumble and their private angst is soon played out in front of families, friends and co-workers.

When Aniston began filming the comedy in Chicago last year she and Brad Pitt had already agreed to dissolve their four-year marriage.

Pitt and his new paramour Angelina Jolie were dividing their time between Alberta, where he was filming The Assassination of Jesse James, and New York where Jolie was filming The Good Shepherd.

Pitt and Jolie's every move was scrutinized by the paparazzi.

Cameras and prying eyes were likewise turned on Aniston to record her reactions.

"I knew there was a script out there called The Break-Up and I'd heard they were considering me.

"Of course I saw the irony of it. When I actually received the script and the offer I laughed," recalls Aniston.

"Then I looked upon it as a sign it was something I should do and I'm glad I did because it proved cathartic."

Looking back now, Aniston feels she "was lucky The Break-Up came to me at the time it did. I understood it on an emotional level.

"If the script had come to me at any other time in my life, I don't know that I would have been able to go to the level emotionally and intellectually that I did as an actor."

Peyton Reed, who directed The Break-Up, admits "the irony of having Jennifer Aniston making a movie called The Break-Up when she was going through her own was not lost on any of us."

He agrees, "Jennifer could relate to the film on a much more personal level, but she never let her situation impact the film set. If I didn't see the headlines on the magazines and papers in the supermarket where I shopped, I wouldn't have known anything that traumatic was going on. There were never any tears on the set unless they were called for in the script."

Insisting she is no expert on relationships, Aniston says she believes "it is laziness that causes romance to go out of a relationship. I think the two people just stop trying their best to make it work."

She adds regardless of what happened to her marriage to Pitt, she is "still very much a romantic. I still believe in love."

Vaughn, who produced the film and wrote it with friends Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender, says Aniston was his first and only choice as a costar but not because it was art mirroring reality. "Jennifer is a wonderful comedian, but she is also immediately sympathetic to an audience. That would ensure I'd have a strong actor to play off."

Neither Aniston nor Vaughn would confirm the relationship they developed on the set of The Break-Up is anything more than a special friendship. They spoke about each other in glowing terms but never said they were a couple.