Do we like Courteney Cox?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of decent conduct, a documented stand for a colleague and no harmful words or company found, but the record we could verify is thinner than we'd like.
Courteney Cox was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the youngest of four children. She studied architecture for a year, then left for modelling in New York. Her break came when Brian De Palma cast her in Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark video, and she moved to Los Angeles in 1985.
Then came ten years as Monica Geller on Friends, the role that made her a household name, plus Gale Weathers in the Scream films. She later picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Cougar Town. Not a bad arc for a bloke-magnet from the architecture class who dropped out.
The biggest story on her file isn't about her at all. In 2017 the New York Times reported allegations from several comedians against Louis C.K. One of them alleged a 2005 incident on the set of a pilot Cox executive-produced. Cox and her then-husband confirmed that account to the Times, and C.K. later said the stories were true.
The harm check came up clean. We searched her name against LGBTQ+, women, vaccines, climate, immigration and Trump and found no harmful statements, no campaigning against anyone's rights and no habit of working with people who do. Most search results were about other people, such as Laverne Cox, so we can't claim much either way on her views. That's a gap, not a tick.
As for how she treats people, her Friends castmates are the best witnesses. At her 2023 Walk of Fame ceremony, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow credited her with setting the tone for one of TV's most supportive casts. That same year she posted a video of herself and Matthew Perry filming a Friends scene. Her caption said she was grateful for every moment with him.
Honestly, that's about the whole list. There's no lawsuit we could open and no allegation against her, which is rarer than it should be in Hollywood. She doesn't wear her politics on her sleeve and doesn't pick culture-war fights, so there's little to cheer and nothing to wince at. We'd happily put her on the telly.