Various cameras

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the word camera obscura (Latin for "dark chamber"), an early mechanism for projecting images. The modern camera evolved from the camera obscura.

Cameras may work with the light of the visible spectrum or with other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. A camera generally consists of an enclosed hollow with an opening (aperture) at one end for light to enter, and a recording or viewing surface for capturing the light at the other end. A majority of cameras have a lens positioned in front of the camera's opening to gather the incoming light and focus all or part of the image on the recording surface. The diameter of the aperture is often controlled by a diaphragm mechanism, but some cameras have a fixed-size aperture. Most cameras use an electronic image sensor to store photographs on Flash memory. Other cameras including the majority from the 20th century use photographic film.

The still camera takes one photo each time the user presses the shutter button. A typical movie camera continuously takes 24 film frames per second as long as the user holds down the shutter button, or until the shutter button is pressed a second time.

History[link]

Camera obscura

The forerunner to the photographic camera was the camera obscura.^[1] In the fifth century B.C., the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti noted that a pinhole can form an inverted and focused image, when light passes through the hole and into a dark area.^[2] Mo Ti is the first recorded person to have exploited this phenomenon to trace the inverted image to create a picture.^[3] Writing in the fourth century B.C., Aristotle also mentioned this principle.^[4] He described observing a partial solar eclipse in 330 B.C. by seeing the image of the Sun projected through the small spaces between the leaves of a tree.^[5] In the tenth century, the Arabic scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) also wrote about observing a solar eclipse through a pinhole,^[6] and he described how a sharper image could be produced by making the opening of the pinhole smaller.^[5] English philosopher Roger Bacon wrote about these optical principles in his 1267 treatise Perspectiva.^[5] By the fifteenth century, artists and scientists were using this phenomenon to make observations. Originally, an observer had to enter an actual room, in a which a pinhole was made on one wall. On the opposite wall, the observer would view the inverted image of the outside.^[7] The name camera obscura, Latin for "dark room", derives from this early implementation of the optical phenomenon.^[8]

The actual name of camera obscura was applied by mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler in his Ad Vitellionem paralipomena of 1604. He later added a lens and made the apparatus transportable, in the form of a tent.^[9][10] British scientist Robert Boyle and his assistant Robert Hooke developed a portable camera obscura in the 1660s.^[11]

The first camera obscura that was small enough for practical use as a portable drawing aid was built by Johann Zahn in 1685.^[12] At that time there was no way to preserve the images produced by such cameras except by manually tracing them. However, it had long been known that various substances were bleached or darkened or otherwise changed by exposure to light. Seeing the magical miniature pictures that light temporarily "painted" on the screen of a small camera obscura inspired several experimenters to search for some way of automatically making highly detailed permanent copies of them by means of some such substance.

Early photographic cameras were usually in the form of a pair of nested boxes, the end of one carrying the lens and the end of the other carrying a removable ground glass focusing screen. By sliding them closer together or farther apart, objects at various distances could be brought to the sharpest focus as desired. After a satisfactory image had been focused on the screen, the lens was covered and the screen was replaced with the light-sensitive material. The lens was then uncovered and the exposure continued for the required time, which for early experimental materials could be several hours or even days. The first permanent photograph of a camera image was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.^[13]

Similar cameras were used for exposing the silver-surfaced copper Daguerreotype plates, commercially introduced in 1839, which were the first practical photographic medium. The collodion wet plate process that gradually replaced the Daguerreotype during the 1850s required photographers to coat and sensitize thin glass or iron plates shortly before use and expose them in the camera while still wet. Early wet plate cameras were very simple and little different from Daguerreotype cameras, but more sophisticated designs eventually appeared. The Dubroni of 1864 allowed the sensitizing and developing of the plates to be carried out inside the camera itself rather than in a separate darkroom. Other cameras were fitted with multiple lenses for photographing several small portraits on a single larger plate, useful when making cartes de visite. It was during the wet plate era that the use of bellows for focusing became widespread, making the bulkier and less easily adjusted nested box design obsolete.

For many years, exposure times were long enough that the photographer simply removed the lens cap, counted off the number of seconds (or minutes) estimated to be required by the lighting conditions, then replaced the cap. As more sensitive photographic materials became available, cameras began to incorporate mechanical shutter mechanisms that allowed very short and accurately timed exposures to be made.

The electronic video camera tube was invented in the 1920s, starting a line of development that eventually resulted in digital cameras, which largely supplanted film cameras after the turn of the 21st century.

Mechanics[link]

Image capture[link]

19th century studio camera, with bellows for focusing

Traditional cameras capture light onto photographic film or photographic plate. Video and digital cameras use an electronic image sensor, usually a charge coupled device (CCD) or a CMOS sensor to capture images which can be transferred or stored in a memory card or other storage inside the camera for later playback or processing.

Cameras that capture many images in sequence are known as movie cameras or as ciné cameras in Europe; those designed for single images are still cameras. However these categories overlap as still cameras are often used to capture moving images in special effects work and many modern cameras can quickly switch between still and motion recording modes. A video camera is a category of movie camera that captures images electronically (either using analog or digital technology).

Lens[link]

The lens of a camera captures the light from the subject and brings it to a focus on the film or detector. The design and manufacture of the lens is critical to the quality of the photograph being taken. The technological revolution in camera design in the 19th century revolutionized optical glass manufacture and lens design with great benefits for modern lens manufacture in a wide range of optical instruments from reading glasses to microscopes. Pioneers included Zeiss and Leitz.

Camera lenses are made in a wide range of focal lengths. They range from extreme wide angle, wide angle, standard, medium telephoto and telephoto. Each lens is best suited a certain type of photography. The extreme wide angle may be preferred for architecture because it has the capacity to capture a wide view of a building. The normal lens, because it often has a wide aperture, is often used for street and documentary photography. The telephoto lens is useful for sports, and wildlife but it is more susceptible to camera shake.^[14]

Focus[link]

Auto-focus systems can capture a subject a variety of ways; here, the focus is on the person's image in the mirror.

Due to the optical properties of photographic lenses, only objects within a limited range of distances from the camera will be reproduced clearly. The process of adjusting this range is known as changing the camera's focus. There are various ways of focusing a camera accurately. The simplest cameras have fixed focus and use a small aperture and wide-angle lens to ensure that everything within a certain range of distance from the lens, usually around 3 metres (10 ft) to infinity, is in reasonable focus. Fixed focus cameras are usually inexpensive types, such as single-use cameras. The camera can also have a limited focusing range or scale-focus that is indicated on the camera body. The user will guess or calculate the distance to the subject and adjust the focus accordingly. On some cameras this is indicated by symbols (head-and-shoulders; two people standing upright; one tree; mountains).

Rangefinder cameras allow the distance to objects to be measured by means of a coupled parallax unit on top of the camera, allowing the focus to be set with accuracy. Single-lens reflex cameras allow the photographer to determine the focus and composition visually using the objective lens and a moving mirror to project the image onto a ground glass or plastic micro-prism screen. Twin-lens reflex cameras use an objective lens and a focusing lens unit (usually identical to the objective lens.) in a parallel body for composition and focusing. View cameras use a ground glass screen which is removed and replaced by either a photographic plate or a reusable holder containing sheet film before exposure. Modern cameras often offer autofocus systems to focus the camera automatically by a variety of methods.^[15]

Some experimental cameras, for example the planar Fourier capture array (PFCA), do not require focusing to allow them to take pictures. In conventional digital photography, lenses or mirrors map all of the light originating from a single point of an in-focus object to a single point at the sensor plane. Each pixel thus relates an independent piece of information about the far-away scene. In contrast, a PFCA does not have a lens or mirror, but each pixel has an idiosyncratic pair of diffraction gratings above it, allowing each pixel to likewise relate an independent piece of information (specifically, one component of the 2D Fourier transform) about the far-away scene. Together, complete scene information is captured and images can be reconstructed by computation.

Some cameras have post focusing. Post focusing means take the pictures first and then focusing later at the personal computer. The camera uses many tiny lenses on the sensor to capture light from every angle of a scene and is called plenoptics technology. The current Plenoptic camera can serve as has 40,000 lenses working together to grab the optimal picture.^[16][17]

Exposure control[link]

The size of the aperture and the brightness of the scene controls the amount of light that enters the camera during a period of time, and the shutter controls the length of time that the light hits the recording surface. Equivalent exposures can be made with a larger aperture and a faster shutter speed or a corresponding smaller aperture and with the shutter speed slowed down.

Shutters[link]

Although a range of different shutter devices have been used during the development of the camera only two types have been widely used and remain in use today.

The Leaf shutter or more precisely the in-lens shutter is a shutter contained within the lens structure, often close to the diaphragm consisting of a number of metal leaves which are maintained under spring tension and which are opened and then closed when the shutter is released. The exposure time is determined by the interval between opening and closing. In this shutter design, the whole film frame is exposed at one time. This makes flash synchronisation much simpler as the flash only needs to fire once the shutter is fully open. Disadvantages of such shutters are their inability to reliably produce very fast shutter speeds ( faster than 1/500th second or so) and the additional cost and weight of having to include a shutter mechanism for every lens.

The focal-plane shutter operates as close to the film plane as possible and consists of cloth curtains that are pulled across the film plane with a carefully determined gap between the two curtains (typically running horizontally) or consisting of a series of metal plates (typically moving vertically) just in front of the film plane. The focal-plane shutter is primarily associated with the single lens reflex type of cameras, since covering the film rather than blocking light passing through the lens allows the photographer to view through the lens at all times except during the exposure itself. Covering the film also facilitates removing the lens from a loaded camera (many SLRs have interchangeable lenses).

Complexities[link]

Professional medium format SLR cameras (typically using 120/220 roll film) use a hybrid solution, since such a large focal-plane shutter would be difficult to make and/or may run slowly. A manually inserted blade known as a dark slide allows the film to be covered when changing lenses or film backs. A blind inside the camera covers the film prior to and after the exposure (but is not designed to be able to give accurately controlled exposure times) and a leaf shutter that is normally open is installed in the lens. To take a picture, the leaf shutter closes, the blind opens, the leaf shutter opens then closes again, and finally the blind closes and the leaf shutter re-opens (the last step may only occur when the shutter is re-cocked).

Using a focal-plane shutter, exposing the whole film plane can take much longer than the exposure time. The exposure time does not depend on the time taken to make the exposure over all, only on the difference between the time a specific point on the film is uncovered and then covered up again. For example an exposure of 1/1000 second may be achieved by the shutter curtains moving across the film plane in 1/50th of a second but with the two curtains only separated by 1/20th of the frame width. In fact in practice the curtains do not run at a constant speed as they would in an ideal design, obtaining an even exposure time depends mainly on being able to make the two curtains accelerate in a similar manner.

When photographing rapidly moving objects, the use of a focal-plane shutter can produce some unexpected effects, since the film closest to the start position of the curtains is exposed earlier than the film closest to the end position. Typically this can result in a moving object leaving a slanting image. The direction of the slant depends on the direction the shutter curtains run in (noting also that as in all cameras the image is inverted and reversed by the lens, i.e. "top-left" is at the bottom right of the sensor as seen by a photographer behind the camera).

Focal-plane shutters are also difficult to synchronise with flash bulbs and electronic flash and it is often only possible to use flash at shutter speeds where the curtain that opens to reveal the film completes its run and the film is fully uncovered, before the second curtain starts to travel and cover it up again. Typically 35mm film SLRs could sync flash at only up to 1/60th second if the camera has horizontal run cloth curtains, and 1/125th if using a vertical run metal shutter.

Film formats[link]

A wide range of film and plate formats has been used by cameras. In the early history plate sizes were often specific for the make and model of camera although there quickly developed some standardisation for the more popular cameras. The introduction of roll film drove the standardisation process still further so that by the 1950s only a few standard roll films were in use. These included 120 film providing 8, 12 or 16 exposures, 220 film providing 16 or 24 exposures, 127 film providing 8 or 12 exposures (principally in Brownie cameras) and 35 mm film providing 12, 20 or 36 exposures – or up to 72 exposures in the half-frame format or in bulk cassettes for the Leica Camera range.

For cine cameras, film 35 mm wide and perforated with sprocket holes was established as the standard format in the 1890s. It is still used for nearly all film-based professional motion picture production. For amateur use, several smaller and therefore less expensive formats were introduced. 17.5 mm film, created by splitting 35 mm film, was one early amateur format, but 9.5 mm film, introduced in Europe in 1922, and 16 mm film, introduced in the US in 1923, soon became the standards for "home movies" in their respective hemispheres. In 1932, the even more economical 8 mm format was created by doubling the number of perforations in 16 mm film, then splitting it, usually after exposure and processing. The Super 8 format, still 8 mm wide but with smaller perforations to make room for substantially larger film frames, was introduced in 1965.

Camera accessories[link]

Accessories for cameras are mainly for care, protection, special effects and functions.

• Lens hood: used on the end of a lens to block the sun or other light source in order to prevent glare and lens flare.
• Lens cover: covers and protects the lens during storage
• Lens adapter: sometimes called a step-ring, adapts the lens to other size filters
• Lens extension tubes allow close focus in macro photography
• Flash equipment: including light diffuser, mount and stand, reflector, soft box, trigger and cord
• Care and protection: including camera case and cover, maintenance tools, and screen protector
• Large format cameras use special equipment which includes magnifier loupe, view finder, angle finder, focusing rail /truck.
• Battery and charger^[18][19]

Camera designs[link]

Plate camera[link]

The earliest cameras produced in significant numbers used sensitised glass plates and are now termed plate cameras. Light entered a lens mounted on a lens board which was separated from the plate by an extendible bellows. Many of these cameras, had controls to raise or lower the lens and to tilt it forwards or backwards to control perspective. Focussing of these plate cameras was by the use of a ground glass screen at the point of focus. Because lens design only allowed rather small aperture lenses, the image on the ground glass screen was faint and most photographers had a dark cloth to cover their heads to allow focussing and composition to be carried out more easily. When focus and composition were satisfactory, the ground glass screen was removed and a sensitised plate put in its place protected by a dark slide. To make the exposure, the dark slide was carefully slid out and the shutter opened and then closed and the dark slide replaced. In current designs the plate camera is best represented by the view camera.

Large-format camera[link]

The large format camera is a direct successor of the early plate cameras and remain in use for high quality photography and for technical, architectural and industrial photography. There are three common types, the monorail camera, the field camera and the press camera. All use large format sheets of film, although there are backs for medium format 120-film available for most systems, and have an extensible bellows with the lens and shutter mounted on a lens plate at the front. These cameras have a wide range of movements allowing very close control of focus and perspective.

Medium-format camera[link]

Medium-format cameras have a film size somewhere in between the large format cameras and the smaller 35mm cameras. Typically these systems use 120- or 220-film. The most common sizes being 6x4.5 cm, 6x6 cm and 6x7 cm. The designs of this kind of camera show greater variation than their larger brethren, ranging from monorail systems through the classic Hasselblad model with separate backs, to smaller rangefinder cameras. There are even compact amateur cameras available in this format.

Folding camera[link]

The introduction of films enabled the existing designs for plate cameras to be made much smaller and for the base-plate to be hinged so that it could be folded up compressing the bellows. These designs were very compact and small models were dubbed vest pocket cameras.

Box camera[link]

Box cameras were introduced as a budget level camera and had few if any controls. The original box Brownie models had a small reflex viewfinder mounted on the top of the camera and had no aperture or focusing controls and just a simple shutter. Later models such as the Brownie 127 had larger direct view optical viewfinders together with a curved film path to reduce the impact of deficiencies in the lens.

Rangefinder camera[link]

As camera and lens technology developed and wide aperture lenses became more common, range-finder cameras were introduced to make focussing more precise. The range finder has two separated viewfinder windows, one of which is linked to the focusing mechanisms and moved right or left as the focusing ring is turned. The two separate images are brought together on a ground glass viewing screen. When vertical lines in the object being photographed meet exactly in the combined image, the object is in focus. A normal composition viewfinder is also provided.

Single-lens reflex[link]

Olympus E-420 Four Thirds entry-level DSLR with a 25mm pancake lens.

In the single-lens reflex camera the photographer sees the scene through the camera lens. This avoids the problem of parallax which occurs when the viewfinder or viewing lens is separated from the taking lens. Single-lens reflex cameras have been made in several formats including 220/120 taking 8, 12 or 16 photographs on a 120 roll and twice that number of a 220 film. These correspond to 6x9, 6x6 and 6x4.5 respectively (all dimensions in cm). Notable manufacturers of large format SLR include Hasselblad, Mamiya, Bronica and Pentax. However the most common format of SLRs has been 35 mm and subsequently the migration to digital SLRs, using almost identical sized bodies and sometimes using the same lens systems.

Almost all SLR used a front surfaced mirror in the optical path to direct the light from the lens via a viewing screen and pentaprism to the eyepiece. At the time of exposure the mirror flipped up out of the light path before the shutter opened. Some early cameras experimented other methods of providing through the lens viewing including the use of a semi transparent pellicle as in the Canon Pellix^[20] and others with a small periscope such as in the Corfield Periflex series.^[21]

Twin-lens reflex[link]

Twin-lens reflex cameras used a pair of nearly identical lenses, one to form the image and one as a viewfinder. The lenses were arranged with the viewing lens immediately above the taking lens. The viewing lens projects an image onto a viewing screen which can be seen from above. Some manufacturers such as Mamiya also provided a reflex head to attach to the viewing screen to allow the camera to be held to the eye when in use. The advantage of a TLR was that it could be easily focussed using the viewing screen and that under most circumstances the view seen in the viewing screen was identical to that recorded on film. At close distances however, parallax errors were encountered and some cameras also included an indicator to show what part of the composition would be excluded.

Some TLR had interchangeable lenses but as these had to be paired lenses they were relatively heavy and did not provide the range of focal lengths that the SLR could support. Although most TLRs used 120 or 220 film some used 127 film.

Ciné camera[link]

A ciné camera or movie camera takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the ciné camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame" through the use of an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a ciné projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures to create the illusion of motion. The first ciné camera was built around 1888 and by 1890 several types were being manufactured. The standard film size for ciné cameras was quickly established as 35mm film and this remains in use to this day. Other professional standard formats include 70 mm film and 16mm film whilst amateurs film makers used 9.5 mm film, 8mm film or Standard 8 and Super 8 before the move into digital format.

The size and complexity of ciné cameras varies greatly depending on the uses required of the camera. Some professional equipment is very large and too heavy to be hand held whilst some amateur cameras were designed to be very small and light for single-handed operation. In the last quarter of the 20th century camcorders supplanted film motion cameras for amateurs. Professional video cameras did the same for professional users around the turn of the century.

Image gallery[link]

• 

  1922 Kodak

• 

  Opened up Cine Kodak, used 16mm movie film

• 

  Silvestri Flexicam

• 

  Voigtländer Brillant twin-lens reflex camera.

• 

  Contax S of 1949 — the world's first pentaprism SLR

• 

  1952 Voigtlander Vito II

• 

  Asahiflex IIa of 1955

• 

  Kodak Retina IIIC of 1957

• 

  Nikon F of 1959 — the first 35mm system camera

• 

  Voigtländer Vitoret of 1962

• 

  1988 A Soviet-era LOMO LC-A camera

• 

  2003 — Canon EOS 300D, a model that sparked the popularity of consumer-level DSLRs

• 

  Nikon Coolpix 5200 One in a line of small cameras by Nikon

• 

  A phone camera

See also[link]

Types[link]

Brands[link]

[edit] Radar Imaging

Other[link]

	Photography portal
	Film portal

• Flash (photography)
• Photographic filter
• Tripod (photography)
• Viewfinder
• Cameras in mobile phones

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Camera

• How camera works at How stuff works.

Jennifer Aniston
Aniston at a ceremony to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 2012
Born	Jennifer Joanna Aniston[1][2] (1969-02-11) February 11, 1969 (age 43) Sherman Oaks, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1989–present
Spouse	Brad Pitt (2000–2005)
Partner	Justin Theroux (2011–present)

Jennifer Joanna Aniston (born February 11, 1969)^[3] is an American actress, film director, and producer. Aniston gained worldwide recognition in the 1990s for portraying Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends, a role which earned her an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Aniston has also enjoyed a successful Hollywood film career. She gained critical acclaim for her performances in the independent films She's the One (1996), Office Space (1999), The Good Girl (2002) and Friends with Money (2006).^[4] She has had her greatest commercial successes with the films Bruce Almighty (2003), The Break-Up (2006), Marley & Me (2008), Just Go with It (2011) and Horrible Bosses (2011).^[5] Aniston was selected for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.^[6]

Early life[link]

Jennifer Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles^[7] to actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow.^[8] Her father is Greek and a native of Crete, while her mother was born in New York City. One of Aniston's maternal great-grandfathers was an Italian immigrant;^[9] her mother's other ancestry is Scottish, Irish, and a small amount of Greek.^[10] Aniston has two half-brothers, John Melick, her maternal older half-brother, and Alex Aniston, her younger paternal half-brother.^[7][8] Aniston's godfather was actor Telly Savalas, one of her father's best friends.^[7][8] As a child, Aniston lived in Greece for one year with her family. They later relocated to New York City.^[8] Aniston attended the Rudolf Steiner School in New York,^[11] and graduated from Manhattan's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.^[7] She worked in Off Broadway productions such as For Dear Life and Dancing on Checker's Grave,^[8] and supported herself with several part-time jobs, which included working as a telemarketer, waitress, and bike messenger.^[8] In 1989, Aniston moved back to Los Angeles.^[12]

Career[link]

Television[link]

Aniston was cast in her first television role in 1990, starring as a regular on the short-lived series Molloy and in the TV movie Camp Cucamonga.^[13] She also co-starred in Ferris Bueller, a television adaptation of the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.^[13] The series, however, was quickly canceled.^[8] Aniston then appeared in two more failed television comedy series, The Edge and Muddling Through, and guest-starred on Quantum Leap, Herman's Head, and Burke's Law.^[13] After the string of canceled shows, along with her appearance in the critically derided 1992 horror film, Leprechaun,^[14] Aniston reportedly considered giving up acting.^[8]

Aniston's plans changed, however, after auditioning for Friends, a sitcom that was set to debut on NBC's 1994–1995 fall lineup.^[7][15] The producers of the show originally wanted Aniston to audition for the role of Monica Geller,^[15] but Courteney Cox was considered to be better suited to the role. Thus, Aniston was cast as Rachel Green. She was also offered a spot as a featured player on Saturday Night Live, but turned it down to do Friends.^[16] She played the character of Rachel from 1994 until the show ended in 2004.^[17][18]

The program was successful and Aniston, along with her co-stars, gained world-wide reputation among television viewers.^[7] Aniston received a salary of $1 million per episode for the last two seasons of Friends, as well as five Emmy nominations (two for Supporting Actress, three for Lead Actress),^{[19][20][21][22]} including a win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.^[23] According to the Guinness World Book of Records (2005), Aniston (along with her female costars) became the highest paid TV actress of all time with her $1 million-per-episode paycheck for the tenth season of Friends.^[24]

In 2007, Aniston guest starred in an episode of Courteney Cox Arquette's series Dirt, playing Arquette's rival, Tina Harrod.^[25] She appeared in the third episode of Season 3 of NBC's 30 Rock playing Liz Lemon's old college roommate who stalks Jack Donaghy.^[26] On July 16, 2009, Aniston received an Emmy nomination in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on 30 Rock. Aniston was a guest star on the Season 2 premiere of ABC's sitcom Cougar Town, playing a psychiatrist.^[27]

Film[link]

While appearing on Friends, Aniston also started segueing into film roles. She made her film debut in 1992's Leprechaun, which was negatively reviewed by critics, but was commercially successful and gained a cult following. Following a four year hiatus from cinema, Aniston returned to film work in 1996, when she played supporting roles in the independent films Dream for an Insomniac, and She's the One, alongside Edward Burns and Cameron Diaz. Aniston's first starring vehicle was the film Picture Perfect (1997), in which she starred opposite Kevin Bacon and Jay Mohr. While the film received mixed reviews, Aniston's performance was more warmly received, with many critics suggesting that she had screen presence.^[28] During the second half of the 1990s she starred in several films such as the ensemble romantic film 'Til There Was You (1997) with Dylan McDermott and Sarah Jessica Parker, The Thin Pink Line (1998), the animated feature The Iron Giant (1999), and the critically acclaimed comedy Office Space (1999). She gained critical acclaim for her performances in The Object of My Affection (1998), a comedy-drama about a woman who falls for a gay man (played by Paul Rudd),^[29] and in the low-budget 2002 film The Good Girl, playing an unglamorous cashier in a small town. The latter film opened in relatively few theaters—under 700 in total—taking $14M in the U.S. box office.^[30]

Aniston, with Steve Zahn, at the premiere of Management (2008)

Aniston's biggest box office success to date was her appearance in 2003's Bruce Almighty, in which she played the live-in girlfriend of Jim Carrey's title character.^[31] Aniston then starred in the 2004 film Along Came Polly opposite Ben Stiller.^[32] In late 2005, Aniston appeared in two major studio films, Derailed and Rumor Has It….^[33][34] In 2006, Aniston appeared in the low-budget drama Friends with Money, which was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival and received a limited release.^[35] Aniston's next film, The Break-Up, which was released on June 2, grossed approximately $39.17 million during its opening weekend, despite lukewarm reviews.^[36] In 2006, Aniston directed a hospital emergency room-set short film called Room 10, starring Robin Wright Penn and Kris Kristofferson as part of Glamour's Reel Moments film series.^[37] Aniston noted that she was inspired to direct by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who also directed a short film in 2006.^[38]

On December 25, 2008, Marley & Me, in which Aniston starred alongside Owen Wilson, was released. It set a record for the largest Christmas Day box office ever with $14.75 million in ticket sales. It earned a total of $51.7 million over the four-day weekend and placed #1 at the box office, a position it maintained for two weeks.^[39] The total worldwide gross was $242,717,113.^[40] Her next film in wide release, He's Just Not That into You, where she starred opposite Ben Affleck, opened in February 2009. The movie made $27.5 million, ranking #1 at the box office in its opening weekend.^[41] While the film received mixed reviews, Aniston, along with Affleck, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jennifer Connelly, were often praised by critics as being the stand-outs in the film.^[42][43]

In March 2010, Aniston appeared in The Bounty Hunter, which costarred Gerard Butler. While the film received scathing reviews from critics, it was a modest box office success, garnering over $130 million worldwide.^[44] A lukewarm box-office reception greeted her next film, The Switch, in which she co-starred with Jason Bateman. The film's opening weekend drew what The Hollywood Reporter dubbed "a dispiriting $8.4 million".^[45] The film received generally mixed reviews, with review site Metacritic showing 13 out of 30 critics delivering a positive verdict.^[46]

By June 20, 2010, Aniston's movies had grossed more than $1 billion in the United States and over $1.7 billion worldwide.^[47] Aniston's Just Go with It, with Adam Sandler,^[48] was released on Valentine's Day weekend in 2011.^[49] The story is about a plastic surgeon, played by Sandler, who asks his office manager, played by Aniston, to pose as his wife, to prove his honesty to his much younger girlfriend, played by Brooklyn Decker.^[50] Also in 2011, Aniston starred in the comedy movie Horrible Bosses, with Colin Farrell, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jamie Foxx, directed by Seth Gordon. The film focuses on a trio of employees who plot to murder their titular tyrannical supervisors. Aniston played one of the bosses, a sexually aggressive dentist who harasses Charlie Day's character.^[51]

Aniston at the London premiere of Horrible Bosses (2011)

In 2012, Aniston appeared in Wanderlust with Paul Rudd,^[52] with whom she co-starred in the 1998 movie The Object of My Affection and also Friends.^[53] The script, bought by Universal Pictures,^[54] was written by Rudd, Ken Marino, and David Wain, with the latter also directing the film, and was produced by Judd Apatow.^[55] The movie was about a married couple who join a commune after losing their money and deciding modern life is not for them.^[56]

EUE/Screen Gems Productions is expected to start work on We're the Millers in Summer 2012 in the Wilmington, North Carolina area. Aniston and Jason Sudeikis star in the comedy about a drug dealer with a fake family.^[57]

Other work[link]

Aniston has appeared in various commercials and music videos. In 1996, she was in Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers music video for "Walls". In 2001, Aniston was in Melissa Etheridge's music video for "I Want To Be In Love". She was cast in a Heineken commercial which was later banned in the U.S. due to branding issues.^{[citation needed]} Aniston has also been in commercials for L'Oreal hair products. In 1995, Aniston and her Friends co-star Matthew Perry shot a 60-minute instructional video for the release of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 95.^[58] Along with Brad Pitt and Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures, Aniston founded the film production company Plan B Entertainment in 2002,^[59] although she and Grey withdrew in 2005.^[60][61] In 2008, she and partner Kristin Hahn formed the production company Echo Films.^[62]

Aniston worked for over a year on a new perfume, which was released on July 21, 2010, at Harrods in London.^[63][64] Original plans called for the perfume to be named Lolavie by Jennifer Aniston, but to avoid confusion with a similarly named perfume, the name was changed to simply Jennifer Aniston.^[65] In an interview following the launch, Aniston said that she would also like to create a fragrance for men.^[66]

Since 2007, Aniston has worked in a publicity campaign for the drink SmartWater; on March 7, 2011, she released a YouTube video, titled "Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral", for SmartWater, tripling online interest in the product within 24 hours of the release.^[67][68][69]

Philanthropy[link]

Aniston is a supporter of Friends of El Faro, a grassroots non-profit organization that helps raise money for Casa Hogar Sion, an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico. She has appeared in many TV commercials for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, which she supports. She also hosted September 2008's Stand Up to Cancer show.^[70]

In the "It Can't Wait" campaign to free Burma, Aniston directed and starred in a video.^[71]

On April 14, 2007, Aniston received GLAAD's Vanguard Award for her contributions to increased visibility and understanding of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.^[72] On Earth Day 2010, she joined Courteney Cox, Woody Harrelson, Ben Stiller and others in "The Cove PSA: My Friend is..."^[73] an effort to stop the slaughter of dolphins and protect the Japanese people from the toxic levels of mercury found in dolphin meat. Other charities that Aniston has supported include AmeriCares, Clothes Off Our Back, Feeding America, EB Medical Research Foundation, Project A.L.S., OmniPeace, and Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.^[74]

Aniston donated $500,000 to Doctors Without Borders, Haitian health care provider Partners in Health and AmeriCares,^[75][76] and also participated in the megastar-studded Hope for Haiti Now telethon.^[77][78]

Personal life[link]

Aniston at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

In May 1998, Aniston began dating actor Brad Pitt. They married on July 29, 2000, in a private wedding ceremony in Malibu.^[79] For a few years, their marriage was considered the rare Hollywood success.^[8] However, the couple announced their separation on January 6, 2005.^[80] Pitt and Aniston were seen together publicly after announcing their separation, even at a dinner party for Aniston's 36th birthday, and friends of the couple had declared they were reconciling.^[81] Aniston, however, filed for divorce on March 25, 2005.^[2] It was finalized on October 2, 2005.^[82] During this period there was intense speculation in the media that Pitt had been unfaithful to Aniston with his Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-star, Angelina Jolie.^[83]

In the following months, the public's reaction towards the divorce was reported in the press. The story became the headline news of media shows such as Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, and made the front-pages of tabloid magazines for years, continuing till this day. 'Team Aniston' and 'Team Jolie' T-shirts appeared, with 'Team Aniston' shirts out-selling the 'Team Jolie' shirts 4:1.^[83] Aniston revealed that her divorce prompted her to reach out to her mother, Nancy, from whom she was estranged for nearly a decade. They initially became estranged when Nancy spoke about her daughter on a television show and later wrote a book entitled, From Mother and Daughter to Friends: A Memoir (1999).^[84][85] Aniston has also stated she was devastated by the death of her longtime therapist, whose work helped make her separation from Pitt easier.^[38] Aniston said her relationship with Pitt, which she does not regret, was "seven very intense years together" and that "it was a beautiful, complicated relationship."^[86]

Aniston and Pitt's former Santa Barbara residence

After her divorce, Aniston began a relationship with actor Vince Vaughn, with whom she co-starred in The Break-Up. Relationship troubles were reported in September 2006, followed by a confirmed split in December of that year.^[80] She dated British model Paul Sculfor for a few months in 2007.^[87] In February 2008, she began dating singer John Mayer.^[80] The couple broke up in August, but they resumed the relationship in October before splitting again in March 2009.

In May 2011, Aniston began a relationship with Justin Theroux. She sold her Beverly Hills mansion in July 2011 for $38 million. In January 2012, Aniston and Theroux purchased a home in Los Angeles’s Bel-Air neighborhood for roughly $22 million.^[88]

Aniston has had two septoplasties to correct her deviated septum—one which was incorrectly done in 1994 and the second in January 2007.^[89]

Aniston is the godmother of Coco Riley Arquette, the daughter of her good friends, actors Courteney Cox and David Arquette.^[90]

In the media[link]

In 2007, Forbes rated Aniston as one of the top 10 richest women in entertainment and estimated her net worth to be about $110 million.^[91] Aniston was also included in the annual Star Salary Top 10 of trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter for 2006.^[92] According to Forbes, in October 2007, Aniston was the top-selling celebrity face of the entertainment industry.^[93] She was also Hollywood's most profitable actress. Aniston has been on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list, based on "earnings and fame", every year since 2001, topping the list in 2003.^[94] For the year of 2008, Forbes listed Aniston's earnings as $27 million.^[95]

In 2005, Aniston became the first-ever GQ Woman of the Year. She has appeared on People's annual list of The Most Beautiful every year since 1995, and came in at #1 in 2004. She also topped the magazine's Best Dressed List in 2006. She has been a regular on FHMs 100 Sexiest Women list since 1996, ranking at #79 in 2012, #81 in 2010, #24 in 2009 and #27 in 2008.^[96] In 2011 The Telegraph reported the most sought after body parts of the rich and famous revealed by two Hollywood plastic surgeons who carried out a survey among their patients to build up the picture of what the perfect woman would look like. Under the category of the most sought after body shape Aniston was voted in the top three alongside Gisele Bundchen and Penelope Cruz.^[97] In the same year, readers of Men's Health magazine voted Aniston the "Sexiest Woman of All Time".^[98]

Although Aniston disliked the hairstyle she wore during her first two years on Friends, "The Rachel" became and remains very popular among women.^[2]

Filmography[link]

Aniston at the premiere of He's Just Not That Into You in February 2009