Biography

Courteney Bass Cox born June 15, 1964, also known as Courteney Cox Arquette, is an American actress, film producer and former model, best known for her role as Monica Geller on the sitcom Friends. She starred in her own show Dirt  and guest starred in Scrubs and the Scream series.

Cox was born Courteney Bass Cox in Birmingham, Alabama to a wealthy Southern family. Her parents were Courteney ,née Bass born 1934 and Richard Lewis Cox born 1930-2002, a contractor. Cox has two older sisters called Virginia McFerrin and Dottie Pickett , an older brother called Richard, Jr.  and nine half-brothers and half-sisters. Her parents divorced in 1974, and her father eventually settled in Panama City, Florida, where he opened a company called Cox Pools, while Cox grew up with her mother and her stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland.

Cox was raised in Mountain Brook, Alabama, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham. She was known as CeCe. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. Upon graduation, Cox went to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College for Women. She dropped out after a year to pursue a modeling career, after being signed by the Ford modeling agency in New York City. While modeling, she also took acting classes and worked to lose her southern accent.

Early careerCox first came to prominence in the 1984 music video for Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” in which she was the girl pulled onstage to dance with Springsteen. Cox is also notable for being the first person to use the word “period” on U.S. television in its physiological sense, in a 1985 advertising campaign for Tampax brand tampons.

 Her early film roles include Masters of the Universe (1987) and Cocoon: The Return (1988). Her early television work includes a starring role in the short-lived television series Misfits of Science (1985), and later a recurring role (1987-89) on the TV series Family Ties as Lauren Miller, the girlfriend of  Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox). She had a supporting role as Jewel, the hard-as-nails assistant to James Belushi’s character, in the 1990 fantasy film Mr. Destiny.

In 1994, shortly before the debut of Friends, Cox appeared with Jim Carrey in the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and on Seinfeld in The Wife episode as Jerry’s girlfriend named Meryl.

Friends

Later in 1994, Cox was asked to audition for the part of Rachel Green on a new sitcom called Friends, but she was instead cast as the character Monica Geller.

At first the most famous cast member of the new show, Cox joined fellow castmates Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe Buffay), Matt LeBlanc (Joey Tribbiani), Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing) and David Schwimmer (Ross Geller) for what would become her most famous role, lasting for 10 seasons until 2004.

According to the Guinness World Book of Records (2005), Cox (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.

Between seasons 5 and 6, Cox married David Arquette and changed her name to Courteney Cox Arquette.

An in-joke reference to this is made in the opening credits of the episodes The One After Vegas, where the rest of the cast and executive producers have “Arquette” added to their names. The dedication “To Courteney and David, who did get married” appears during the fade out to the tag scene.

Film careerDuring her time on Friends, Cox appeared in the high-profile Hollywood films Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 3 (2000) as the determined and driven reporter Gale Weathers.  There she met her husband, David Arquette who played her on-screen love interest Dwight “Dewey” Riley, while filming the first of this trilogy.

Although she starred in several other films during her time on Friends, none achieved the same level of success as the show. Such films include The Runner, 3000 Miles to Graceland and The Shrink Is In. In late 2003, Cox and Arquette produced one season of the reality television series Mix It Up. The lifestyle show, which aired on the We cable channel, struggled with low ratings and was not renewed for a second season.

After her Friends role, Cox was producer Marc Cherry’s first choice to be offered a starring role as Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives. However, Cox was unavailable due to her pregnancy and the role went to Teri Hatcher. A couple of years later, Cox signed a deal with ABC Studios (formerly Touchstone Television), to star in her own series.

Since Friends, Cox has primarily concentrated on her family but has starred in the independent film November (2005), which had a limited theatrical release, co-starred with Tim Allen in the critically derided Zoom and cameoed in the big budget remake of The Longest Yard, as the girlfriend of Adam Sandler’s character. Cox later said her breasts were digitally enhanced to portray her role as the wife of a quarterback. She has recently supplied her voice for the animated film Barnyard. A Friends reunion film was rumored to be released within the next 18 months  following the success of Sex and the City: The Movie but this has been denied by Warner Bros. and others.

Since 2007, Cox has starred as Lucy Spiller, a cynical tabloid editor, in Dirt, a television drama for the FX network. Cox and her husband, David Arquette, are the executive producers of the series.  According to Cox, the series was canceled after the second season in 2008.

In July 2008, Entertainment Weekly announced that Cox had signed on to star in a three episode arc for the television series Scrubs. In her first episode, she makes a reference to the name of the character Dr. Cox, which in real life is her own. In August 2008, it was announced that there will be a fourth film in the Scream series, and that they want the original actors to reprise their roles.

On October 30, 2008, TV Guide reported that Cox will be starring in a pilot for a new single-camera comedy series on ABC called Cougar Town from Bill Lawrence. Cox will be playing a newly single 40-year-old mother. Her co-stars include actresses Busy Philipps and Christa Miller. Cox filmed the pilot on March 19, 2009.

Cox’s previous significant others include Ian Copeland and a long-term relationship with actor Michael Keaton from 1989 to 1995. Cox also dated singer Adam Duritz of Counting Crows and appeared in their music video for song “A Long December” in 1997. (Duritz has also dated Cox’s Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston.)

Cox married David Arquette on June 12, 1999. On June 13, 2004, she gave birth to their first child, daughter Coco Riley Arquette. The child was originally to be named after her mother as Courteney Cox Arquette. However, Arquette’s family objected to this on the grounds that naming a child after a living relative goes against Ashkenazi Jewish tradition (David Arquette is Jewish, as his mother was Jewish, however Arquette and Cox’s child is not Jewish, as Cox is not Jewish). Coco is a nickname Cox’s friends gave her mother when she was a child, calling her “Mama Coco”. Jennifer Aniston is the baby’s godmother.

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