Biography of Courteney CoxCourteney Bass Cox Arquette (born June 15, 1964) is an American actress and former fashion model, known for her role as Monica Geller in the hugely popular television sitcom Friends. She now plays Lucy Spiller, an executive editor of a tabloid magazine, on the popular drama Dirt on FX Networks.
Cox was born Courteney Bass Cox in Birmingham, Alabama to a wealthy Southern family. Her mother, also named Courteney (née Bass), was a housewife, and her late father, Richard Lewis Cox, was a businessman/contractor. Cox has two older sisters (Dottie Pickett and Virginia Cox), an older brother (Richard, Jr.) and nine half-brothers and half-sisters. Her parents divorced in 1974, and her father eventually wound up 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 a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, Mountain Brook, Alabama where 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 acquired a Northern accent.
Cox first came to prominence in the 1984 music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" (in which she was the pulled-on-stage girl who danced onstage with Springsteen for 26 seconds). 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). Cox's early television work include a starring role in the short-lived television series Misfits of Science (1985), and later a recurring role (1987 - 1989) on the television series Family Ties as the last girlfriend of Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox). She had a supporting role as Jewel, the hard-as-nails assistant to Jim Belushi's character in the 1990 fantasy film Mr. Destiny. In 1994, Cox appeared as Meryl, Jerry's girlfriend/pretend wife on the hit TV sitcom Seinfeld.
After appearing in the Jim Carrey comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Cox found fame playing Monica Geller on the hit TV series Friends (1994-2004). This was the role for which she would become most famous. The six principal cast members, including Cox, became household names due to the mass popularity and success of the show.
During her time on Friends, Cox appeared in the highly successful and high-profile Hollywood films Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), and Scream 3 (2000) as the fame-seeking reporter Gale Weathers. It is while filming the first of this trilogy that she would meet her husband David Arquette. 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 produced the television series Mix It Up. The lifestyle show received 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 Television Studio (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, in which she sported larger breasts than her normal size. Cox later said they were digitally enhanced to portray her role as the wife of a quarterback. She has recently supplied her voice for the animated film Barnyard.
As of 2007, Cox plays Lucy Spiller, a tabloid editor, in Dirt, a television drama for the FX Networks. Cox and her husband, David Arquette, are the executive producers of the series.
Cox's previous significant others include Ian Copeland and a long-term relationship with actor Michael Keaton. 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 met actor David Arquette on the set of Scream; the couple married on June 12, 1999 in an Episcopalian ceremony held at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA. Both Arquette and Cox had the sentence A deal's a deal inscribed on their wedding rings. While Cox has occasionally used her full married name, "Courteney Cox Arquette", professionally, she continues to be generally known simply as "Courteney Cox," which was said to honor her father when he died.
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, David Arquette's family objected to this on the grounds that naming a child after a living relative goes against Jewish tradition. Coco is a nickname Cox's friends gave her mother when she was a child. Cox's close real life friend and "Friends" co-star, Jennifer Aniston, is the baby's godmother.
In June 2007, Cox announced plans to expand her family. The actress said she hopes to have a child through in vitro fertilisation despite battling post-natal depression after Coco's birth.
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