It’s surreal to me that I have an opinion about Jennifer Aniston at all.  I’ve never seen an episode of “Friends” and the only Aniston movie I saw, The Good Girl, I saw for Jake Gyllenhaal’s magnetically sad and soft stare.

As far as I can tell that was her creative apex, where she played an ordinary underachiever.  But playing average is hardly a breakout role, even if you’re a pin-up projection of the girl next door.  Wait, she was in Office Space too…

The trouble with Aniston is that she seems ever the afterthought, the Plan B for those scripts that don’t fit into Sandra Bullock’s schedule.  In many ways, she’s one of those stars whose personal life has eaten into her creative arc, making the Aniston name less about the craft than about the tribulations of her angsty panties.

Despite her reliable paychecks, Aniston has become less and less known for her acting and more as some kind of suffering Saint of Singlehood, proof to women everywhere that they could be perfect and men would still be shady.  Her exile in rom-coms only serves to confirm this meta-role, as she gets constantly cast as the girl who ends up with the man of her dreams, a symbolic compensation for our desire to see Aniston finally get the man we think she deserves in real life.

Now that Aniston “has a few films under her belt” she told the British tabloid The Sun she plans to direct a feature project.  This must be the Redbook version of artistic inspiration, as if making a movie was like learning the baste stitch.

Many actors, including Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood, have stepped behind the camera and produced serviceable and truly great pieces of work.  What does Jennifer Aniston have to say that we need to hear?  This step makes sense for an actress like, say, Tilda Swinton, who has repeatedly demonstrated that she can occupy the extremities of a role and is preparing for her own directorial debut.  Swinton is someone who has a rationale for trying to frame the story instead of occupying the story’s frame.  Can Aniston honestly say that she’s done anything bracing, had any role that stretched far beyond the flitty girl looking for Mr. Right in the delusional world of the Hollywood love story?

Moreover, when one thinks of the great directors one thinks of their signature point of view and style.  Is “nice” an aesthetic?  It’s easier to identify with our perceptions of her life than it is to describe one of her performances.  If adjectives fail me, they do so because their no traction in her persona.  Something of a pretty every-girl.  A spongy blur of toothy Americana.  Aniston’s entrance into the directorial role seems to diminish the position by making it the logical extension of a fairly thin filmography.

Of course the right script could be just the thing to break Aniston from the pigeon-holing of her love life.  “I’m married to my films,” she could announce behind Lady GaGa style shades, in a thick, slow German accent.It’s fascinating to watch the stars make horribly mistaken assumptions about the versatility of the arts.  Many actors, from  Jennifer Love Hewitt to Bruce Willis, have believed that pop music was just another variety of acting, only to find themselves out of their depth in a veritable puddle.

It’s understandable that Aniston would want to widen her brand even more broadly than her recently launched perfume, Lolavie.

After all, the “celebutante” democratization of fame has created intense market volatility (see bombed out careers of Demi Moore and Jennifer Lopez) and Aniston’s probably cognizant of the fact that every celebrity has an expiration date or even an indeterminate dormant period that must later be revived by some future indie upstart auteur.

If Aniston has been caged by the tabloidization of her life, she might find the spotlight just as confining from the director’s chair.  So far her film choices have been notable for their monotony.  Would fans follow her if she decides to go moody?  Dark?

Something grimly Japanese?  Will her fans even care about the new, relatively invisible role of director when they seem to care more about the promotional interviews for her films than the movies themselves?  Worse still, has Jennifer Aniston created the worst kind of marketing conundrum where fans are now passively attached to their perception of her (un)fulfillment? I suppose the most interesting aspect of Jennifer Aniston might be that her eventual happiness could be her undoing.