In the new movie "Dumplin'," which debuts on Netflix on Dec. 7, Jennifer Aniston plays a former beauty queen mom who's obsessed with appearances, including that of her plus-size daughter, who enters a pageant.
In a new interview with Australia's The Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail Australia and Radar Online both report, Jen draws parallels between the onscreen story and her own relationship with late mother Nancy Dow.
"She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like," Jen said of Nancy, who died in 2016 at 79 following a series of strokes that left her in decline.
"I did not come out the model child she'[d] hoped for and it was something that really resonated with me," Jen told the paper. "This little girl just wanting to be loved by a [mom] that was too occupied with things that didn't quite matter."
Nancy, who was previously married to Jen's dad, soap opera actor John Aniston, also had a few small parts on shows such as "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Wild Wild West" in the '60s.
Nancy and Jen were estranged for years in part because Nancy wrote a book about their relationship, 1999's "From Mother to Daughter to Friends: A Memoir."
In 2015, Jen opened up about Nancy, with whom she eventually reconciled — though their relationship reportedly remained strained — in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"We're all fine [now]," Jen told THR. "She had a temper. I can't tolerate that. If I get upset, I will discuss [things]. I will never scream and get hysterical like that. [But] I was never taught that I could scream. One time, I raised my voice to my mother, and I screamed at her, and she looked at me and burst out laughing. She was laughing at me [for] screaming back. And it was like a punch in my stomach."
According to Jen, "She was critical. She was very critical of me. Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn't. I never was. I honestly still don't think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine. She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty."