Friends 'Til The End

In a town filled with fair-weather friends, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston are the real deal, come rain or shine

- Marisa Laudadio

Sandra Bullock was on a mission to disrupt — and delight. During a Netflix press junket in December, where she was promoting her thriller Bird Box, she stacked a tray with tequila shots, juice and lime wedges and crashed a nearby interview. And it wasn’t just any interview: Jennifer Aniston and soundtrack songwriter Dolly Parton were in the middle of discussing their film Dumplin’. As the country music legend wet her whistle, Aniston puckered up and kissed Bullock on the lips then declared the refreshments “delicious.” Bullock smugly replied, “That’s the way you like it, Mama.”

INSTANT CONNECTION

It all started about five years ago, multiple insiders reveal. “They’d known each other from the industry,” a source tells Us. They’d both dated actor Tate Donovan in the ’90s (see next page) and enjoyed the title of “America’s Sweetheart” after a string of rom-com hits, including one each with Ben Affleck as their leading man (1999’s Forces of Nature for Bullock, 2009’s He’s Just Not That Into You for Aniston). As Us reported in the summer of 2014, the friendship was sparked during a dinner party at the home of one of Ben’s exes — Gwyneth Paltrow. Says the Aniston insider, “They got to talking and everything just really clicked.” It didn’t take long for them to discover “they had similar outlooks on life and the same dry sense of humor. They bonded over where they were in life and what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood.”