During the later seasons of Friends, viewers began to notice a change in Monica’s face – Courteney Cox’s character on the show. As it turns out, Cox had begun her journey with fillers, one that would continue for decades. For years she got more and more injections until she finally felt that she no longer looked like herself. After making the decision to have them removed, Cox has opened up about her experience, sharing her own story in the hopes it may help others.
Cox kept getting more fillers
At some point in her life, Cox felt compelled to get injections to try and keep her youthful appearance. “There was a time when you go, ‘Oh, I’m changing. I’m looking older.’ And I tried to chase that youthfulness for years,” she explained. “And I didn’t realize that, oh… I’m actually looking really strange with injections and doing stuff to my face that I would never do now.”
However, after her first round of injections, she continued to get more. “It’s a domino effect,” she said. “You don’t realize that you look a little off, so then you keep doing more, ‘cause you look normal to yourself.” To the rest of the world, though, it looks a lot different. “The next thing you know, you’re layered and layered and layered. You have no idea because it’s gradual until you go, ‘Oh… this doesn’t look right.’ And it’s worse in pictures than in real life,” she explained.
“You look in the mirror and go, ‘That looks good.’ You think, and you don’t realize, what it looks like to the outside person,” she said.
It was the public reaction that changed her mind
Cox was never shy about discussing the cosmetic procedures she had done in her younger years. In fact, she previously opened up about it in February 2022 when talking with the Sunday Times. Here, she explained how her altered appearance became more obvious to her due to the constant public commentary about her looks.
She says that it was people talking about her injections, fillers, and general appearance that had led her to decide to have the fillers removed. The public would not stop scrutinizing her new appearance and it had her questioning her decision. “The scrutiny is intense, but I don’t know if it could be more intense than what I put on myself,” she shared.
Ultimately, Cox decided to have the filler dissolved in 2017, saying that it was at that time that she realized her face just didn’t “look right.”
She’s thankful the treatments are reversible
When she finally made the decision to have the fillers dissolved, she was thankful she even had the option. “Thank God they’re removable,” she said. Even now, she sees images of herself with all the filler and wonders how it ever got to that point. “I look at pictures of me when I thought I looked OK,” she explained, “and I can’t believe it.”
For Cox, one of the biggest disappointments was thinking that her face was aging when she was still so young, to the point she felt compelled to do something about it. “Thinking that I was getting older when I was really young, that’s just a bummer, a waste of time,” she said. “I messed up a lot, and luckily I was able to reverse most of that. And now I’m just older.”
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When Courteney Cox first had the fillers removed, she wanted to post a before-and-after photo of herself, but her publicist refused to allow it. Instead, Cox now flaunts her natural face, free from any fillers, and lets people who want to see what she previously looked like check it out for themselves. “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.”