YOU would think that addressing an audience of young people at Europe’s biggest children’s film festival would allow an A-list actress to put herself across as a positive, inspiring role model for the next generation.

Instead, Jennifer Aniston blubbed her way through a Q&A at the recent Giffoni Film Festival in Italy,

Now I like Jennifer Aniston. I’m of the ‘Friends generation’ who have much affection for Ross, Rachel and the gang, and I’ve always regarded Aniston as a gifted comic actress.

But I have no time for public figures who get openly emotional about self-doubt. It started with Princess Diana, and it’s always done when there are cameras around.

When asked, during the Q&A, if she ever woke up not knowing who she was, Aniston said there were “not enough fingers and toes in this entire room to count how many times that moment has happened”. Often “the pain is too great”, she added, and she asks herself “am I good enough?”.

I’m with Piers Morgan who, speaking on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, criticised Aniston for “self-wallowing” while having made her “body a commodity”.

He has a point. With her flawless olive skin and youthful figure, Aniston, 47, looks as fabulous now as she did when she was Rachel Green, serving coffee in Central Perk. Yet her perfect image perpetuates a myth that heaps insecurities on young females, like the ones sitting in the Q&A watching her sob.

Why do famous women feel the need to publicly share their insecurities? And what message does that send out to teenage girls?

I’ve interviewed many actresses over the years. Some, like Alison Steadman and Julie Walters, were fun, intelligent, and didn’t seem to take themselves too seriously. Others were self-absorbed, self-righteous and dull, with a tendency to talk about acting as if it’s something important. It really isn’t.

Acting is essentially dressing up and pretending to be someone-else. If you’re particularly good at it, or you get a lucky break, you get paid extremely well for it. Then there are the perks; not least the designer gowns you’re paid to wear on the red carpet, and the five-star treatment on those oh-so-tiresome promotional tours.

It’s not a bad life. It’s not like doing a 10-hour shift in a windowless chicken processing factory, or a busy night shift as a casualty nurse in an under-staffed, over-stretched inner city A&E department. Yet so many actresses can’t get through an interview without moaning. The usual gripe is the lack of decent roles for women over 40 - oh, get over it! I know vanity goes hand-in-hand with acting, but why does it take them by surprise that once they hit middle-age they’re asked to play a mother of teenagers or a divorcee? That’s life, love. And I don’t believe those are the only roles offered to older women anyway.

Then there’s bodyshaming. As Piers Morgan put it so well on Good Morning Britain: “Nobody in Hollywood is actually legally compelled to do a naked magazine cover. If you do that, I don’t think you can then go ‘woe is me, they’re all taking pictures of my body’.

“Get a grip. Remember, half the world is starving, and most of the rest of the world has no money, no mansions, no Ferraris, and no handsome Hollywood star husband.”

Actresses choose to make a living out of a profession that is, by nature, narcissistic. When it comes to lights and cameras, they know their best side. And they know how to turn on the tears.