Montecito Award: Jennifer Aniston, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

Reviewed by Mimmi Karlsson. Viewed at the Arlington Theater on Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

Jennifer Aniston was as beautiful as always when she arrived to the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara. Mostly known from the tv-show Friends, Jennifer recently did an outstanding role in the movie Cake which is the biggest reason for getting the Montecito Award. The motivation by Roger Durling, SBIFF Executive Director, was “Once in a while a performer we thought we knew gets outside of his or her comfort zone and shows us the unexpected. When that happens, it is cause for celebration – and this is why the 2015 Montecito Award is bestowed upon Ms. Aniston.”

The event on the Arlington was joyful and the theater was packed. People were laughing and cheering as the screen on the stage showed clips from Jennifer’s movie career. It was presented as a timeline and after each film clip Jennifer answered some questions and told us about how it was to play that particular role. Jennifer was laughing herself and said that she had forgotten how funny she was in some scenes.

An interesting question that came up was how she got the role in Cake. Jennifer explained that she had tried for a long time to get a more serious role than her role as Rachel in Friends. Some film makers didn’t think she could do serious roles and some said that she had “to much baggage”. I understand that it is hard to hire a famous actor, such as Jennifer, to play totally different roles than what they usually do. When someone has done several alike roles, the audience will usually remember that and connect the actor with that role. Luckily Jennifer managed to get the main character’s role in cake and could prove people wrong about playing a serious role.

She also talked about how she first tried to become an actress and that it was hard to get roles. It is a big competition out there but I think we all can agree that Jennifer got the best role she could have gotten in Friends. She never stopped trying and her career is now outstanding!

I loved this event probably mostly because Jennifer seems to be such a down-to-earth and warm person. She is also happy and smiles a lot. I believe she really loves what she does. The feeling in the theater was great and I didn’t want the event to end. The evening gave me some new movie tips and I learned that if you fight for what you want, it can happen.