Two years ago, Aniston could have cried herself a lake. Her résumé boasted a string of foundered pilots and series. She was "petrified" to walk into movie auditions--for which she blames her agent at the time, who predicted she'd find fame on TV. "I hated him for that, because I thought, You have no faith in me," Aniston recalls. "It's like your father, who instilled doubts in you as a kid."

  Indeed, her dad, John Aniston, who plays Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives, says he warned his daughter that "you always see actors struggling--it's something you wouldn't wish on your children." Jennifer ignored his advice--particularly after her parents divorced when she was 9. Born in Sherman Oaks, Calif., she was raised in New York City by her mom, now a photographer. After graduating from the High School of the Performing Arts, the Fame school, in 1987, she headed to Hollywood (her career choice did please her godfather, Telly Savalas).

  Aniston got an agent and some gentle advice: Lose weight. "I wasn't fat, I was just Greek," Aniston protests, "and Greeks are round, with big asses and big boobs." As she says this, she scoops out the soft inside of a burnt bagel and eats the remaining shell. Thanks to such tricks, she shed 30 pounds (at 5 feet 512 inches, she now weighs 110) --and got parts on short-lived series like Ferris Bueller, The Edge, and Muddling Through.

  Then along came a pilot called Friends Like These. Originally asked to audition for the role of Monica, Aniston refused. "I'm so much more Rachel," she says. "More neurotic than Monica, a bit more offbeat."

  A title change and a season later, Friends has proved her ex-agent right. And now Aniston speaks of her longing to "drive far away and find little antique stores and bed-and-breakfasts and go hiking...and just take some time out for meeting a man." She confides that her most intense new relationship is with...her computer. Aniston recently discovered the Internet, where she can mingle in anonymity. "I was up until 3 a.m.," she says of the previous night's online session. "I can't get away from it. It's a sickness."

  But not even the Net affords a complete escape from Friends mania: "This little girl online was like, 'I just got my hair cut like Rachel's!' It's like when I got the Valerie Bertinelli cut, the coolest thing in the world. And I had all these burns on my forehead from my curling iron."

  Aniston laughs, trying to keep her head about achieving notoriety for her locks. "It's just a fad. It'll go away." Will her own fame be hair today, gone tomorrow? Unlikely. She may need another stack of head shots--and not just because of her driving.