'''Courteney Cox Arquette''' (born '''Courteney Bass Cox''' on June 15, 1964) is an American actress and former fashion model, best known for her role as Monica Geller in the long-running television series ''
Friends''.
Early life
Cox Arquette was born in Birmingham, Alabama to an affluent Southern family; her late father, Richard L. Cox, was a businessman and her mother, also named Courteney, was a housewife. Cox has two older sisters (Dottie Pickett and Virginia Cox), one older brother (Richard, Jr.) and nine half-brothers and half-sisters. Her parents divorced in 1974, and her father moved to Florida, while Cox grew up with her mother and her stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland.
Cox was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. 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 one 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 lost her Southern accent.
Career
Cox was 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. After coming to prominence in the 1984 music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" (in which she became the pulled-on-stage-girl who danced onstage with Springsteen), she appeared in several theatrical films, including ''
Masters of the Universe'' (1987) and ''
Cocoon: The Return'' (1988).
Cox had a starring role in the short-lived television series, ''Misfits of Science'' (1985) and later had a recurring role (1987 - 1989) on the television series ''
Family Ties''.
Cox also appeared as Meryl, Jerry's girlfriend/pretend wife on the hit TV sitcom ''Seinfeld'' in 1994 for one episode, The Wife. She was a little known actress when she guest starred on ''Seinfeld'', which was well into its fifth season and getting great reviews then, like it would for the rest of the time it was on.
Cox is best known for playing Monica Geller on the hit TV series ''
Friends'' (1994 - 2004). She became the only principal member of the show's cast not to be nominated for an Emmy Award. After the show became successful, Cox appeared in several high-profile Hollywood films, including ''
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'' (1994), ''
Scream'' (1996), ''
Scream 2'' (1997), and ''
Scream 3'' (2000), and also appeared in an episode of WCW Monday Nitro trying to convince her husband David
