When you think of Courteney Cox, it's hard to separate her from her iconic roles. She's frozen in time in the minds of many as Monica Geller or Gale Weathers. Time has passed, however. Friends, although forever alive in syndication, ended nearly 15 years ago. The latest Scream film was eight years ago. Courteney is now 57 years old, and like many actresses in Hollywood, she has struggled with aging in the public eye.
Courteney has been open in the past about experimenting with Botox and fillers. This probably wouldn't have been newsworthy (since many middle-aged actresses try some light fixes), but a 2015 photo of Courteney caused quite the stir when people criticized the Cougar Town star for going overboard with fillers.
In the photo, she looks like an oddly overinflated version of herself. It was around this time that a friend let her know that it was officially too much, as she revealed to NewBeauty. The conversation forced her to confront her feelings about aging and led her to decide to have her fillers removed.
Courteney Cox got her big break as the girl Bruce Springsteen plucked out of the crowd in his music video for "Dancing in the Dark." It's been 38 years since that video, and Courteney's star has only risen since.
Since the very beginning of her career, Courteney has been absolutely gorgeous. Her piercing blue eyes and dark hair have always made her stand out.
Courteney is, of course, best known for her role as Monica Geller on Friends. Courteney was already 30 years old when she started playing the 20-something-year-old Monica.
When Friends wrapped, Courteney was 40 years old and looked as great as ever. However, Hollywood is known to instill the fear of aging in actors early on.
It was five years later that Courteney started making appearances to promote Cougar Town. Courteney was 45 at the time, and critics immediately began to notice that she'd had work done.
Courteney recalled how the slippery slope of fillers began in an interview with NewBeauty. She said that "what would end up happening is that you go to a doctor who would say, 'You look great, but what would help is a little injection here or filler there.' So you walk out and you don’t look so bad and you think, no one noticed—it’s good."
As the recommendations continued coming, it was easier for things to get out of hand. Courteney explained, "Then somebody tells you about another doctor: 'This person’s amazing. They do this person who looks so natural.' You meet them and they say, 'You should just do this.' The next thing you know, you’re layered and layered and layered."
The result of having just a little something added here and there added up until one day, a friend stepped in to intervene.
Courteney said, "You have no idea because it’s gradual until you go, 'Oh s**t, this doesn’t look right.' And it’s worse in pictures than in real life. I have one friend who was like, 'Whoa, no more!' I thought, 'I haven’t done anything in six months.' I didn’t realize."
People began to talk about Courteney going too far when a photo of her at the 2015 premiere of Hand of God surfaced. In it, Courteney looked like an awkwardly inflated version of her former self.
In mid-2017, Courteney revealed that she'd had all her fillers dissolved. "I’m as natural as I can be," she said. "I feel better because I look like myself. I think that I now look more like the person that I was. I hope I do."
Courteney now looks back on her filler fails with clarity. "[I tried] to keep up with time in a way that was anything other than maintenance," she told People. "I didn’t realize it until one day I kind of stepped back and went, 'Oh s—. I don’t look like myself.'"
Courteney has been working to take care of herself and rebuild her confidence. "So now I just embrace who I am and getting older with what God gave me, not what I was trying to change," she explained.
Courteney is aware that she was having a difficult time embracing aging, but now she's dedicated to it.
"I would say it’s a common thing you go through as you age, especially in Hollywood," she said. "You have to accept getting older, and that’s something that I had a hard time doing."
Now she's focused on owning it, and she's doing a great job.
She said, "I kind of own everything. And the things that I am not as comfortable with myself, they’re things that I continue to work on to grow and change. I think I am at a stage of my life where it’s very easy to be comfortable with who I am and who I’ve become and who I strive to be."
