The 47-year-old actor is opening up -- and revealing the one 'heartbreaking' aspect of his breakup.
Justin Theroux has moved on from his breakup with Jennifer Aniston -- he just wishes the rest of the world will too.
In an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, the 47-year-old actor opened up about his split from Aniston for the first time, revealing that the most "exhausting" part of the separation has been everyone else's obsession with it.
“The good news is that was probably the most -- I’m choosing my words really carefully -- it was kind of the most gentle separation, in that there was no animosity,” Theroux said. “In a weird way, just sort of navigating the inevitable perception of it is the exhausting part.”
According to Theroux, it wasn't any one big fight that prompted him and Aniston to announce their split in February after two years of marriage. “These are actually in reality small events that take place. But everything can feel like 10 on the Richter scale if you make the headline big enough and salacious enough," he explained.
Theroux continued, describing the "carny lifestyle" he and Aniston led as actors, with frequent separations just part of the job. Because of that, the breakup "doesn’t have that seismic shift of an ordinary couple, where everything is, like, you have to tear a baby in half,” he reasoned. “Neither one of us is dead, neither one of us is looking to throw hatchets at each other. It’s more like, it’s amicable. It’s boring, but, you know, we respected each other enough that it was as painless as it could be.”
“It was heartbreaking only in the sense that the friendship would not be the same, as far as just the day to day," he shared. "But the friendship is shifting and changing, you know, so that part is something that we’re both very proud of.”
Shortly after their split, reports surfaced claiming that Theroux's love for New York and Aniston's love for LA was one of the reasons they just couldn't make it work. While speaking with The New York Times, the actor didn't exactly deny that was the case.
“Life there is a very gate-to-gate, garage-to-garage, car-to-car, and that’s just for anybody,” he said of Los Angeles. “There is this kind of hermetic seal that’s placed around you. For me, at least, it can very quickly turn you into a house cat, in that you’re perceiving what’s going on around you through panes of glass: your windshield, your driver’s side door, your rearview mirror.”
“In New York,” he said, “the minute you shut your door behind you, you’re out in it.”
When asked if he's dating again, Theroux teased, “Is this the part where I coyly raise an eyebrow and not answer the question?”
Theroux and Aniston definitely seem to be on the same page. In a candid interview for InStyle's September issue, the actress insisted she really wasn't too broken by her and Theroux's split.
"It’s pretty crazy. The misconceptions are 'Jen can’t keep a man,' ... Or that I’m sad and heartbroken," Aniston said. "First, with all due respect, I’m not heartbroken."
"When a couple breaks up in Hollywood, it’s the woman who is scorned," she noted. "The woman is left sad and alone. She’s the failure. F that. When was the last time you read about a divorced, childless man referred to as a spinster?"
See more in the video below.
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