Courteney Cox - Cougar Town season 2 promos

Courteney Cox-Arquette (born Courteney Bass Cox; June 15, 1964) is an American actress, best known for her role as Monica Geller on the sitcom Friends. Cox has also starred in Dirt and the Scream series, and has guest-starred in Scrubs and in Seinfeld. She is currently starring in Cougar Town, for which she earned her first Golden Globe nomination.

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 Book of World 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 final two seasons of Friends.

Between seasons five and six, 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 episode The One After Vegas, where the rest of the cast and executive producers have "Arquette" added to their names. The dedication "For Courteney and David, who did get married"—a reference to Monica and Chandler's decision not to marry in the episode—appears during the fade out to the tag scene

Film career

During 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. She met her husband, David Arquette who played her on-screen love interest Dwight "Dewey" Riley, while filming the first Scream film. Both Cox and her husband David will reprise their respective roles from the Scream trilogy in 2011's Scream 4. The movie will be released in theaters April 15, 2011.

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. She also appeared as Wendy Bronson, alongside Adam Sandler in Bedtime Stories.

Later career

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, costarred 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. She supplied her voice for the animated film Barnyard. A Friends reunion film was rumored to be in production; following the success of Sex and the City: The Movie but this has been denied by Warner Bros. and others.

In 2007, Cox starred as Lucy Spiller, a cynical tabloid editor, in Dirt, a television drama for the FX network. Cox and her husband David Arquette were 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 third episode, she told Dr. Cox that Cox was "a ridiculous name", in reference to 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 plays a newly single 40-year-old mother on the hunt for new experiences. Her co-stars include actresses Busy Philipps and Christa Miller. She reunites with Scott Foley, 10 years after they did Scream 3 together. Cox filmed the pilot on March 19, 2009. In June 2009, Scream director Wes Craven confirmed that Cox and her husband would both be returning for Scream 4