While Courteney Cox is best known for her role as Monica Geller on the former sitcom Friends, these days, the actress has also built up quite a name for her drastic plastic surgery procedures, which at one point prompted significant changes to her face anytime she was seen out in public.
It’s no secret that Cox is a huge fan of going under the knife to perfect her looks, but the mother of one hasn’t shied away from the fact that she’s had work done. While she hasn’t owned up to all the things she’s undergone over the past 10 years or so, she has admitted to getting a little help from a surgeon to achieve a youthful appearance.
While there are dozens of rumors regarding what the 57-year-old has had done to her face, so far, she’s only openly talked about being a huge fan of fillers at one point in her life. But she soon stopped for this reason. Here’s the lowdown…
Courteney Cox’s Surgeries
Cox didn’t shy away from the fact that she’s gone under the knife to perfect her appearance every now and then, telling New Beauty in a June 2017 interview that the decision of regularly injecting dermal fillers into her face was mostly because of what her surgeon had recommended her.
Whenever she would stop by for a visit, she recalled how her doctor would say how great she looked, but it was always followed with the remark of getting a little more filler done in certain areas, subsequently making Cox feel as if she needed the additional work.
"Well, 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,'" she said in the interview.
Cox continued by saying that things were relatively fine in the beginning since nobody noticed the small changes she had made to her face.
However, from there, she would get recommendations to see other plastic surgeons, who would — again — compliment her great looks but insist on advocating for more procedures. Eventually, people started telling her to slow down with the surgery, and while she didn’t realize it at first, she was starting to spiral out of control with it.
If the surgeon recommended it, Cox would practically get it done, not realizing that she probably didn’t even need it.
"So you walk out and you don’t look so bad and you think, no one noticed — it’s good. Then somebody tells you about another doctor: 'This person’s amazing. They [did] 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. You have no idea because it’s gradual until you go, 'Oh shit, this doesn’t look right.’”
On one particular occasion, fresh after leaving her surgeon’s office, Cox had gone to see a longtime friend, who she recalled was utterly shocked by her drastic appearance change. The pal supposedly looked at her and said, "Woah! No more.”
The Alabama native said that the remark ended up being the turning point for her to ditch the plastic surgery by dissolving all the filler that very same week.
"I’ve had all my fillers dissolved. I’m as natural as I can be," she insisted. "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.”
When asked whether she’d ever want to get back to using fillers in the future, Cox asserted that she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of perhaps getting some light work done later on in life, but she plans to remain natural looking.
"But, they come up with new stuff all the time — it’s crazy how many new machines are out there,” she joked. "Things are going to change. Everything’s going to drop. I was trying to make it not drop, but that made me look fake.
“You need movement in your face, especially if you have thin skin like I do. Those aren’t wrinkles — they’re smile lines. I’ve had to learn to embrace movement and realize that fillers are not my friend."
In May 2021, Cox appeared in the Friends reunion alongside her former cast members Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and Lisa Kudrow, who earned a reported $5 million for their partake in the one-time HBO Max special.
While the reunion sparked conversations regarding a potential reboot including the original cast, there haven’t been any official reports indicating that NBC is looking to bring the sitcom back — at least not for a reboot.
But considering how popular the HBO Max special was, perhaps there’ll be more fresh content from Friends coming up in the near future.