Years ago, Courteney Cox started getting work done on her face. She started with fillers and kept going until she looked other than herself. I’m saying this because Courteney is one of the few celebrities who admitted to injectables and said she regretted it. It took her a while to dissolve and lose the changes she’d made, but she reversed them and learned to accept the face age gave her. Looking back, Courteney acknowledges she took measures to look youthful that she would not do now.
Courteney Cox, 58, has no problem admitting where she went wrong.
She admitted that for a while, she struggled to accept the physical changes that accompany aging.
“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 said.
To assuage those feelings, Cox began getting injections in her face. But rather than finding the fountain of youth via injectables, Cox says she started to look “really strange.”
“I didn’t realize that, ‘Oh sh** I’m actually looking really strange with injections and doing stuff to my face that I would never do now,'” she said.
Growing older with the world watching, many of whom remember Cox as a 30-year-old TV star, is no easy feat. And people had plenty to say about her change in appearance.
But when those close to her began to chime in, she knew something had to change.
“I’d say, ‘The day you realize what your friends were talking about.’ Because people would talk about me, I think. But there was a period where I went, ‘I’ve got to stop. That’s just crazy,'” she said.
“The scrutiny is intense,” she said, “but I don’t know if it could be more intense than what I put on myself.”
I empathize with Courteney on this. I remember looking in the mirror years ago and seeing an older version of myself. My first thought was make it stop! I went with lotions and potions instead of injectables. Of course, my face matured and I look my age, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. There was a period, though, I refused to look at myself in photos because of the face looking back at me. Back in the day, I thought Courteney was one of the most beautiful faces on television. To have to deal not only with beauty changing, but the world at large discussing it, I understand why she went to the lengths she did. Thank goodness she didn’t make any permanent changes so all of it could be a past regret and not a present one.
I found Courteney’s comments about her friends talking about her face interesting. Does she mean behind her back? Or did they have some kind of injection intervention? Now that I write that, it should totally be a thing, especially in Hollywood. And I hope those same folks who talked about Court’s face took a look at their own.
One last thing: this is coming up again because Courteney will be 59 this year, so reporters are taking a Face Your Age approach to her interviews, I guess. But she had a great line about turning 60. She said, “there’s nothing wrong with being 60, I just can’t believe it. Time goes so fast.” We always assume someone is complaining about their age when they comment on it, but this is such a better answer. Sometimes, it’s just acknowledging the passage of time, not regretting it.
Photo credit: Cover Images, Joe Sutter/PacificCoastNews/Avalon, Getty and via Instagram
Too late. I feel bad for her. Terrible what that world does to women.
She looks more like herself now but I agree she hasn’t been able to completely “reverse” it (or maybe she kept doing more subtle procedures. It’s such a shame.Of course she’s still a beautiful woman, but she was a stunner and she would still be if she had accepted to age gracefully.
Most of it is gone but she’s still got high cheek fillers. But still, she looks a lot better than when her entire face was different.
She still looks like she is doing something with her face. She’s 59 and her face is looking much younger. Fess up Court.
Whatever she was doing, she started to look like that Betheny Frankel person. Some of it must have been more than just fillers, implants maybe, because she still looks a bit off.
I mean, she clearly had a face lift — that’s not reversible.
Always makes me laugh when my husband thinks celebs don’t ALL get plastic surgery. I mean maybe one or two percent don’t (those who are genetically blessed), but EVERYONE has gone under the knife for a nose job, or an eye lift, or lipo, or boob job, or the full on pull that gives you that stretched out joker smile. Plus lasers, fillers, botox, acid peels, etcetcetc.
She also had a rather severe eye job that made her look hollowed out for several years.
Yes! They all get **lots** of work done. If they just got a few things here or there the public wouldn’t even notice it. Case in point. My MIL has had several things done to her face – upper eyelid blepharoplasty, thread lift, chemical peels, etc. – and she still looks like herself just slightly fresher. My friend gets regular Botox and a little filler and she never looks frozen or waxy or weird – I can never tell she’s had anything done. These celebrities are going crazy with procedures, getting dozens of things done for us to notice them.
@shannon
Yes I have seen that to, I have lots of people close to me that does fillers botox etc and some of them works with it to. They do it all the time like each and every month, yet it is hardly noticeable.
These famous ladies, for it to be so
o noticeable I honestly think they do some sort of procedure almost every week. And very invasive provedures to.
Such a shame that she has so much money and STILL wasn’t happy enough to just live life as a rich lady with a regular face.
And I get it! The pressure on women celebs must be incredible, but I’d like to think if someone gave me tens of millions of dollars a year (every single year!) I’d just disappear to a tropical island forever.
I have a huge soft spot for Courteney, she comes across as very vulnerable yet earnest and real.
The fillers may have worn off but she still looks great, they don’t ever dissolve 100 in my opinion. I recently moved to LA and turned 32 and had Botox for the first time and the nurse said I should have started at 21, the pressure is intense but I only did baby Botox and she asked me I assume you still want your face to move and I was like yes, I want my face to still move, wth! I just want to prevent deep wrinkles to develop around forehead and eyes as I am a huge smiler.
I think Courteney really looks amazing!
Please tell me you know that nurse is inflicted with some inner voice that she was projecting onto you! There is not a 21 year old on the planet who should start with Botox. Look up Lala Kent, she’s the poster child for “my botox is preventative!!!!” She looks decades older than she is, and frozen.
I live in LA, too, and I’m 48. I can promise you that my face looking age appropriate hasn’t hindered me, professionally or personally. Granted, I’m an accountant, and no one wants an accountant that looks like they slept at a frat house the night before, but seriously, no one who matters in your long term happiness is going to care if you look 32, which is still a baby.
Grrrrrr, that nurse!
She did something to her eyes and lips also that are more permanent but she is looking better and she seems like a lot of fun. I admire her for talking about his. Fillers (as they are currently() are things I think we are going to look back on in 20 years as archeic.
She’s looking more herself and that alone is a breath of fresh air. She looks lovely and in fact more youthful without that her shit in face than with it!
I appreciate what she is saying. And as I get older, I too see signs of aging. I keep thinking maybe I’ll ask what I can do next time I see my dermatologist but I know it’s a slippery slope.
I think I read someone post that Joan Rivers said you either look old or you look odd, choose one.
Even with celebrities that were able to pull it off in the 40s are starting to look odd when tweaking in their 50s.
It really is a no win situation.
It’s definitely different to look in the mirror these days. I turned 37 two months ago, and while I still get carded, I’m starting to see fine lines in my face. I’m also starting to get white hairs, and that’s honestly been the most difficult thing for me. I don’t dye my hair as it’s naturally a dark strawberry blonde, so the white mixes in most of the time, but oof. Some days I want to pluck them all or dye them.
@SusieQ: I’ve read that after a few pluckings the follicule becomes damaged and hair stops growing. There are some shampoos on the market that slightly color to blend in greys. I’ve been using John Frida’s Defy Grey for brunettes and while it’s not a miracle it definitely does help.
Except JLO she still looks like a natural 30s but she’s superhuman
Eh, I wouldn’t say 30, did you see the post she made where the smoothing filter glitched? I think Jlo looks amazing and definitely younger than her age but I also think she uses filters a lot more than people thought.
JLO gets work done and good plastic surgery, but still, plastic surgery, and even JLO doesn’t look like she died when she was 30.
JLo was exactly who I had in mind when I made my comment. She does not look 30 or even a young 40. I agree she looks great – she has the best that money can buy at her fingertips and also takes great care or herself and good genes help too. But she does not look 30.
JLo looks amazing, she doesnt look 30 but she looks great. She uses filters, only allows camera angles that are beneficial, etc. She has a enough vanity to do the little subtle injections here and there I’m sure. That last time she went on a red carpet with a huge hat on, worn so close to her eyes? Something was definitely off about her eyes/brow gaze situation.
I think with J-LO it could go either way.
If she doesn’t look 30 that might be because we’ve seen her be famous for most of our lives. I didn’t know who she was I think it’s possible I could mistake her for 30.
People’s mannerisms give away their ages more than their faces, I think. When she told Ben Affleck to look motivated at the Grammys, that’s when you could tell she was a woman with experience who knows how to command the person she’s with. I believe that comes with age. A younger person wouldn’t necessarily have that kind of disciplined command. For a split second when she was scolding Affleck, she looked like a school principal haha.
Anyway….J-Lo’s BODY looks 25. That’s where she definitely looks young. Without intense exercise, even a younger person doesn’t look as good as her. When people say J-Lo looks young I believe they’re talking about the entirety of her (body and face), not just the face. Some people have young faces, but who knows that their bodies look like. J-Lo is FIT!
@seraphina-Same, for the last couple of years I’ve seen my father looking back and me in the mirror and it’s freaking me out. I think it’s because as a young adult you look pretty much the same for a long time and then suddenly the aging starts and it feels like it’s out of nowhere. I think it’s also because you weren’t really looking for it or paying attention to it then you see a pic or yourself or turn your head in a way in the mirror and boom, you see aging skin.
Yes this is true and I know I haven’t paid much attention to my face (looking at it) with lockdown COVID so now as I get back into society and put on make up – I see things have started to age,
There is a hilarious meme of Danny Trejo in a long blonde wig with the caption of “when you are told you look like your father” came to mind when I read your comment. It’s hilarious because I too am told I look like my father.
Since I turned 40 (4 years ago now) I have noticed some real changes in my face and more than ever its my mother in the mirror. I’m working on coming to terms with that but it’s taking time.
Jlo looked younger for many years but age has definitely caught up to her now. You can see it in Shotgun wedding and recently at the Grammy’s. She still looks great her body is banging but she does look her age.
Such a beauty.
I do think part of the strangeness of having Friends still on in almost constant rotation, makes it striking when we see her now.
Matt LeBlanc has been in several shows since Friends and so he’s kind of aged in front of us.
I’d prefer to look old vs. plastic surgery odd. Joan did far too much.
Yes and I think that has a great deal to do with it too.
I can’t believe Courtney Cox is turning 60. I think she is smokin! I could get lost in those beautiful eyes of hers and, because I can’t tell if photos are retouched, filtered, face tuned or whatever else one can do to a pic, it looks like she has really great skin that has not been sun, booze and cigarette damaged
I keep thinking about this. I am 42 and on my 42nd birthday made a botox appointment. My skin is pretty good but I could use some smoothing. I cancelled it twice and didn’t go through with it. Why? Well I am 42. So what is the game plan? To get botox for the next 30-40 years? What is that going to look like. I don’t know. Maybe someone can help me with that. I can’t square it in my head. I wouldn’t mind looking a little refreshed but it seems like such a slippery slope.
Also, I have been moisturizing with Castor Oil at night. It has made the biggest difference in my skin. It’s not botox but I thought I would share that here lol
I give myself oil facial massages. There are a ton of tutorials on YouTube.
I’ve been doing Gua sha messages to my face and looking at face yoga. I’m fine with wrinkles, except for the angry birds lines between my eyebrows. The gua sha has been helping, they’re still there, but much less.
I am considering Botox, I’ve heard that the best use of it is not for completely stopping any wrinkles from forming, but freezing your young wrinkles. So you Botox to keep your 45 year old wrinkles on your 60 year old face. I’m considering doing that.
No young person ever truly thinks that they will get old. It’s something that happens to other people. Until, say in your 40s, you look at yourself properly in the mirror for the first time in ages and see someone different looking back and then panic can set in. That being said, I’ve never understood why paralysing your facial muscles with Botox can ever be considered a good thing. Surely stopping the muscle from functioning as intended must lead to it wasting away. Using facial exercises to tone the muscles seems more sensible to me. I’ve been doing this for a while and it seems ok. Hopefully it’s making me look younger than I otherwise would, but I’ve no control to use as a comparison and so will never know for sure.
Exactly! You said exactly what I’ve been thinking about aging now that I’ve entered my 40’s perfectly.
Whenever I get critical about my face lines or looser neck skin I think about my 89 year old grandma, whom I love dearly, and whom I might live long enough to look like. Then I look at myself again through the eyes of my 89 year old self and see how young and pretty I am. Then I slather on my creams and get on with my day. It’s not going to be easy to let go of the beauty of youth but if you live long enough it will happen to all of us (Jane Fondas and Joan Riverses aside) so how much time and money and mental anguish do you want to waste worrying about it, ya know? That’s my personal take.
There’s been something very cruel about hitting 40 in early 2021. Between aging and pandemic stress, I feel like I look so haggard all of a sudden! Like, I see photos of myself from 2019 and I look like a different person. It feels so strange, but there’s nothing I can do.
I turned 40 at the end of 2021 and feel exactly like this.
Biggest difference in my skin was committing 10 years ago to religious use of prescription retin A at night and sunscreen during the day – even when i am nowhere near the sun.
I also got an eye lift for my ( family trait) puffy-saggy eyes which made me stop looking tired all the time LOL.
Retin A can do a lot to mitigate / prevent wrinkles and tighten your skin. It’s also a lot cheaper than Botox.
This is a joke. She looks nothing like a regular almost 60 year old. Tons of work still there. Please stop lying about the work.
I think she’s still getting work done, but I don’t necessarily think she looks young. She just kind of weird. Maybe she doesn’t look old in the conventional sense (i.e permed short hair, old people clothes from the 80s or 90s, love handles, etc). but I do think her face looks ….odd. For someone who was as strikingly beautiful as she was, I would feel a lot of hurt about it if I were. If she had left everything alone, she’d still probably look young-ish, good, and not weird.
Yeah, she’s still getting lots of work done. I found her lips/mouth especially distracting in that video–the way she forms words is totally different than when she was younger, because her lips are too big. But to be fair, she never said she’s stopped getting procedures altogether–just stopped whatever it was that made her think she looked weird. (And I agree with @Thinking that she still looks a bit weird.)
Well, she’s a beautiful woman and very funny and I hope she continues to embrace aging a little more gracefully than she used to.
I appreciate her acknowledgement of regret. It’s gross that we’re supposed to feel ashamed of growing older. I have no problem being older, I’ve earned my years, but then I actually worry I’ll seem out of touch, silly older woman to my younger colleagues. It’s stupid because of course men don’t worry about that, but also, I’m Gen-X, younger generations emulate the fashion, music, and pop culture of my generation. Younger generations have grown up in a culture more accepting of gender and sexual identities, but it’s not the fault of my generation that western culture hadn’t arrived there yet when we were growing up. Younger generations should honestly recognize my fashion sense and cool personality for how awesome they are, but I’m still wearing night cream too.
I think it’s the evaulation of how a person looks as they get older that’s a little weird.
It probably starts as young as 22 when maybe your weight is a little different than when you were 16.
People tend to scrutinize for changes (maybe to be make themselves feel better?) and that sort of evaluation is probably what has everyone running to the spas to get touch-ups.
I wouldn’t consider myself beautiful like Courtney Cox or any other celebrity. I would say I’m an ordinary looking person who is neither ugly (no one really fits into that category) nor beautiful. But even being rather average, in my own estimation against a glamorous person who puts in the effort to look stunning, I find people evaluate me. And …uh…it’s weird, since my job isn’t being a model. And I’d never want to be one because of that kind of pressure (and the financial expense of trying to maintain).
I think some of the scrutiny comes from other women, which is even stranger. I don’t think men notice much except that you’re the opposite sex, and that in itself makes them happy. They’re not that picky or they’re blind. I’m not sure which.
I had forgotten what an absolute stunner she was until I watched Scream and Scream 2 recently. She looks great now. Clearly has had some work but it isn’t too intense (to use her verbiage). I will always have a soft spot for her, ever since her Family Ties days!
Well, she looks great now and she was unable to undo all the stuff she once did (it’s not too late for Madonna, then). I’m glad she’s found the peace and grace she always deserved to give herself.
Sorry, meant “able” and NOT “unable.”
She says she comes from a family that puts an intense amount of emphasis on beauty.
That said, she was also born very naturally beautiful. It must be tough for people who look like her to age. The little things that she’d notice in aging I probably wouldn’t notice, but if you’re born that pretty I figure it must be hard to see changes.
I can’t even imagine how weird it must be for someone like Cindy Crawford.
I do find it interesting that more people aren’t calling the industry for misleading people about filler. It often doesn’t dissolve and it does migrate. I say that as someone who got filler once ( under my eyes) to have it dissolved 7 years later by a plastic surgeon when I went in for an eye lift consult. He noticed it immediately. I was shocked that it would still be there all those years later as it was just the one time.
I feel like it’s the same issue as with friends who got boob jobs 15-20 years ago and who subsequently developed auto immune issues when the silicon leaked. Some of this stuff is really unproven.
Here’s my philosophy, FOR ME: it is a privilege to age.