From where Courteney Cox is sitting, things are looking pretty good. After an emotional year that included getting used to death of her father, the energetic actress is focused firmly on her future after friends. What's next for the blue-eyed girl? Starting a family, building a house, perfecting her karaoke-anything but sitting still.
There’s something different about Courteney Cox, though it’s not readily apparent when she first walks into the restaurant. Actually, she bustles into the place, the clubby Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge, breathless and apologetic for being a mere 10 minutes late. She has had a swamped Tuesday that included not only shooting Friends all day but also putting in an offer to buy a house. The deal later fell through, but not to worry, there will be others. You see, while other people relax by golfing or gardening, Courteney’s outsize hobby is houses. Usually she redecorates and remolds them until there’s literally nothing left to do but retrace her steps. Then she turns them over-for a profit. “I have a lot of energy,” she says, ordering a glass of wine, a red that the manager reminds her she enjoyed on a previous visit. “When I smoked , I used to relax because I’d actually sit down to have the cigarette. But I haven’t smoked in four years, and I haven’t sat down in four years either!”
Perpetual motion not withstanding, Courteney is no blur. In fact, the opposite is true. There’s something more distinct and centered about her then you’d imagine. At 38, the actress-associated in millions of minds as Friends’ Monica Bing, nee’ Geller- has found a clarity in her life. But this clarity didn’t materialize out of a self-help book, say friends. It was born out of intense personal loss. Last year Courteney’s father, Richard Cox Sr., died of cancer. The pain was made even more profound because his death came in between two miscarriages and around the time she lost her two dogs, one 15, the other 14, which she had had since they were puppies.
When Courteney first learned of her father’s illness, a rare form of rapidly spreading cancer, she was told that untreated he would only have three months to live. Immediately she went into full-on fix-it mode, spending hours making phone calls and searching the internet for information on the disease, then flying him wherever she thought he could get the latest and best help. “He was doing the conventional medicine, but I believe there’s more to it then chemotherapy. My dad really wanted to live, so he was willing to listen to his kooky daughter. We tried it all", she says, "enumerating everything from herbal treatments and visits to a healer (where her father was seated next to a dog also seeking remedy), to consultations with Swiss doctors who could prescrive drugs not available in the US."
Her father-an Alabama pool contracter who was divorced from her mother, a homemaker, when Courteney was 10-survived for a year and a half. “Whether the treatments helped him live longer, I don’t know,” she says, reaching behind her and knocking on the wood of a nearby lamp. “But I believe that something helped. He was playing tennis a month before he died. I am really thankful for the time we had; it was amazing. It’s morbid for me to say, but when you know you’re going to die, you live life to the fullest.”
Those closest to Courteney say the experience really opened her up. “This was something she couldn’t find a solution for,” says friend and co-star Jennifer Aniston. “She was forced to surrender, and that was a big deal to her. She did it with such grace and dignity, and not without effort. Trust me, she’s still always on the go, moving and grooving. It’s not like she’s stopping but there’s a peace about her.”
It was out of respect for her father’s memory that Courteney decided to start using her maiden name again in some situations. “When I was a kid, I wanted to change my last name so badly because I didn’t like it,” she says, adding. “It’s not an issue for David [Arquette, her husband]. I am an Arquette, but I’m also a Cox. My social security card says Courteney Cox Arquette. And when we have a children they will not be Cox-Arquettes, they will be Arquettes.”
Still, the move did raise a few eyebrows about the state of their three-year smarriage. Courteney and her friends say everything is alright, but it seems like an improbable match to some people. Says Katherine Estes Billmeier, Courteney’s longtime friend, who recently visited from her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, “We went to this party and some producer said to me, ‘What’s the deal with them? I don’t get it.’ And that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. He’s probably the more live-in-the-moment type, and she really thinks about the future. But he is nuts about her, and she is nuts about him. They balance each other out.”
The couple first met while working on the 1996 film Scream. Both were coming out of other relationships, he with Ellen Barkin, she with Micheal Keaton. So it wasn’t until they starred together in Scream 2 the following year they started dating. “I didn’t think he was someone I’d end up,” says Courteney. “He was too wild for me. He lived hard and was a bit of a daredevil. But he became less wild after his mother passed away. He changed.” Today, she says, “ he is able to slow me down.”
As for right now, the two are pretty settled in their Malibu home. Since putting their house in Brentwood on the market, the couple have lived in the beach place full-time. Designed in 1979 by noted L.A. architect John Lautner, it’s a remarkable glass-and-wood structure with sweeping curves that mirror the shoreline. Courteney has respectfully restored the place, going so far as to obtain the original design plans from the previous owners. “Every bit of decorating she has done there, with the exception of some of David’s knickknacks, is meant to amplify John Lautner’s work, not Courteney Cox’s decorating acumen,” says actor and friend Tim Blake Nelson. “It’s really extraordinary.”
But the house is more a hang-out pad than design showpiece. Most Sunday nights, for instance, Courteney and David host a karaoke party. After a buffet dinner, guest adjourn a to the Diamond Lounge, a groovy room decked out with retro video games like Donkey Kong and Centipede, to unleash their inner divas. “It’s a hoot,” says Billmeier. “Courteney and Brad [Pitt] were up their doing a song together, that was great. Courteney always says that she and the cast are all friends. The truth is, they really are. Jennifer and Brad spent the weekend there.”
Courteney who says she can belt out a pretty good rendition of TLC’s “Waterfalls,” wasn’t always so bold. “Every year she becomes freer and more in tune with what’s funny about herself,” says Aniston. “I don’t know if I could have seen Courteney getting up on a karaoke stage eight years ago and doing an interpretive dance when the moment strikes her. I cannot even get on stage-yet.”
And don’t for one minute think that Courteney isn’t working on that. “Sit with Courteney for 20 minutes and you are inspired,” says Aniston. “You feel like you can basically go out and conquer the world.”
In some ways Courteney and the rest of her castmates have already done that. Friends-in the middle of it’s ninth and most likely its last season- is enjoying some of its highest ratings ever, promising to go out with a bang. “We are starting to go, ‘Wow, this is so much fun,’ says Courteney. “Knowing this is the last year, we’re able to appreciate it even more.” And though she knows it’s looming, the show’s end is something she can’t yet contemplate. “I don’t think it’s going to really hit us until after Christmas when we have eight episodes left,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The unknown-Courteney admits she’s not always comfortable with it. “I like to see what’s ahead,” she says. So she’s already got big plans for her life after Friends. Starting a family is tops among them. “It would be a great transition for me to have a child,” she says, vowing to keep on trying. “Even though I’m 38, I don’t feel it, and I know I can get pregnant. I’m not panicked about it at all. Since my dad [passed away], I feel like whatever is going to happen. Besides, David is meant to have children. He’ll be an amazing dad. He has so much patience and such an amazing heart.”
She would also like to take a stab at building a house from the ground up. “One of my fortes is taking a space that has limits and bringing out it’s full potential. It you give me walls, that’s OK. That’s why building a house is scary to me. It’s unlimited. We’ll see if I could build a house from scratch. I think I could.”
Even school is a possibility. “David and I talk about going back to school together. In college I wanted to be an architect,” she recalls. “I studied for about a year, took nine classes, and got A’s, but then I went to New York and did a little bit of modeling. I just never went back. I wish I had.”
Who knows? Maybe she’ll even take some time to sit down and relax. But whatever happens, all that she has recently had to endure has left her well prepared for whatever comes next. “We are all tied to our parents, and when one of them leaves, there’s a tether that releases,” says Aniston. “She’s still the person she always was. But now she’s able to pursue things on a freer level.”
Courteney seems to agree: “Something has shifted in me. I feel like there’s a weight off my shoulders. It feels really light. This weekend at the beach house, it just hit me. I turned to my husband and my friends and I made a toast. I said, ‘I am so happy right now.’”