[from Sky International Magazine, 3/97]

...about sex, nights out drinking with Jennifer Aniston, drugs, what she really thinks of the rest of the Friends cast, that embarrassing Bruce Springsteen video appearance, Christian Slater and losing her virginity.

Jeff Dawson meets Courteney Cox.

"Ooooh," coos Courteney Cox, surveying a page of sex toys.Her eyes race over assorted vibrators and spiky, knobby impenitents. She pauses at a battery-operated Jessica Rabbit (that's a clitoral stimulator to you matchy), raises one of her perfectly-arched eyebrows and lets out a hearty chuckle. Not one of the diners around us gives a second glance- which is a good job really as we are in Rosti's "up scale" (ie, bloody expensive) LA delicatessen. This is Ms. Cox's local nosh erie and we've just popped by to pick up a take away chicken salad. Only Courteney's got ton distracted flipping through Sky's legendary sex Issue. She gives another "Eeeeew" and an "Aaaargh" and when she finally manages to tear her eyes from the page asks: "Can I keep this?" You can indeed, madam, although I have to say I find it hard to imagine old Monica Geller- Friends famously-prudish neat-freak - taking such a healthy interest in objets erotiques. But then, as Courteney Cox is at pains to point out, she and her character should never, even be confused. Got it? "I'm neat, there is no question, but I'm notneat like Monica's neat," she explains in a mode that is way warmer and certainly far more relaxed then her spiky alter ego. "I'm not as compulsive, I'm much more li ad-back then Monica for sure.

And Monica wouldn't drive as fast as I do. I'm an aggressive driver." She mulls that one over for a second. "But I'm safe." A first date whit Monica would no doubt involve much anxious nit-picky chat and self-critical introspection. Courteney Cox is, in fact, very good at just chilling... Our initial meeting is at a coffee shop in the plush neighbour hood of Brent wood, right opposite Mezzaluna, the restaurant where Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson-Brown spent their final hours. Courteney plonks herself down at a table, she's sans make-up, dressed in sweats, a black headband and whit her shades battened down against the low mid-morning sun. She only lives round the corner and is fresh from a lie-in after a hectic journey from New York. She apologises for her non-goddess-like appearance today (her assessment). " I don't have horn growing out of my head, but I don't have that much confidence in my looks," she confesses, fumbling for a Marlboro Light. "I mean you're looking at me now, I ain't no great shakes." I reassure her that her position at the top of many a bloke's "most shag gable" list would suggest otherwise, but she doesn't seem convinced. Suddenly we do seem to be straying into Friends territory. I can picture the scene - Monica wailing, Rachel reassuring, Ross lecturing, Chandler fidgeting and Phoebe/Joey chipping in with something stupid. All whit a Central Perk cappuccino in hand, I put it to Courteney that the Friends characters are so bloody wired on all that coffee, perhaps they should all smoke pot instead. "That would be hysterical," she chuckles, delicately exhaling a puff of legal weed to the side of the side of the table. "They'd be laughing up a storm I'm sure. That's actually a very funny concept. Maybe we should just do one show link that." Of course, the US TV authorities would never stand for it, though Courteney does point out that when three Friends girlies hang out at each others` houses, they are not averse to letting themselves go. "Well, we like our wine," she says of herself and Jennifer Aniston in particular (unlike the Friends blokes, apparently, who are pussies when it comes to getting legless). "We're not lushes or anything but I like to have a glass of wine after the show, I like to unwind." Two years ago, when Friends first hit the US networks, Courteney Cox had ever heard of - and then in Britannia we'd only just heard of her.

A veteran of the US TV shows like Family ties whit Michael J. Fox and movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective ( She's the one who works for the Miami Dolphins and hires Ace to find Snowflake), she was famous principally as the girl Bruce Springsteen picked from the crowd in the Dancing In The dance video ("You say Bruce can't dance? Then nor can I, because I copied everything he did") and as Michael Keaton's girlfriend. We know what you'd thinking: Keaton is about as far as you can get from Counting Crows singer Adam Duritz, who's rumored to be her current aqueeze. Plus he's a rather crinkly 13 years her senior. "You like being dominated them?" I ask, rather cheekily. "I used to, not now," she replies and adds that she once went out whit a bloke seven years her junior. "Nothing wrong whit that either," she says, giving - if I'm not mistaken - a rather raunchy cackle. Courteney Cox calims she was a slow starter when it came to love. As a girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she was allegedly "too shy" to merit serious attention, young Cox had her heart broken by the high school tennis champion and was not exactly quick out of the blocks when it came to losing her virginity. "I won't say who whit, but I do remember it," she says, getting a little wistful. "I think I was 19, but I may have been 20. I waited a sufficient amount of time." According to Courteney, her family back down South still hasn't come to terms whit her sex kitten celebrity profile, despite the fact that through her mother's remarriage, young CC became a cousin to long-time show biz impresario Miles Copeland.

(The story goes that Miles helped her into New York's Ford modelling agency by slipping them tickets to see younger brother Stewart's band The Police at Shea Stadium.) "It's all a little crazy for them," shy says of her folks. "They respect whet I do, but then there's fact that I'm 32 and I'm not married and I'm not in a relationship. To them I'm a old maid. Hahahaha." And there we have it, gentlemen. It's official. Courteney Cox - Courteney Bass Cox, to give her her full, unusual moniker - is single, and since the demise of four-year relationship whit Keaton just over 12 months ago, she's become the most elible honey in show business. Or have she...? While Courteney's been filling her days whit work (two movies: Scream, a horror flick by Wes Craven, and a thriller, The Commandments, squeezed in between a hectic Friends schedule), the tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic have been more concerned with pairing her off with any young never-do-well who comes her way.

Christian Slater was the first. "Christian's someone who I'm friends whit and yes I went to an event whit him one night. We both had to go, so why not go with someone you like?"she says. "He's just a friend." And the British press have her dating actor David Arquette, (see Jenuary's Sky), and Ace Ventura director, Tom Shadyac - both at the sime time. "Oh hahahaha, I just think he's the greatest thing. He's the nicest, funniest, sexiest actor and he's also just a really good friend. Tom Shadyac, he's also a great friend. That's the problem - people don't believe that girls can have great friends. Especially as some of these guys are really cute." Not everyone's idea of cute, however, is Adam Duritz, the dresdlocked singer/songwriter whit Counting Crows, a band who are just about as big as you can get in the states right now. Courteney and Adam have been snapped in classic "leaving restaurant after romantic meal together" pose. And you can see a certain Ms Cox in Counting Crows' current video for A Long December. Just so's you know, Duritz is a poet of our generation," according to Courteney. And on the news-stands, on the day we meet Courteney can be seen, in a fuzzy paparazzi snap, embracing the hirsute crooner at LA airport. COURTENEY COX SMOOCHES UP A STORM WHIT ROCKER LOVE,screams the headline. According to "an insider," Duritz is "sloppy and smells like cigarettes, but he sings lullabies to woman and casts a spell." "Did tewy really say that?" I've got some friends who are far scruffier then Adam," she laughs. Whatever, this beauty and the tramp story is just going to run and run and run in the press, especially as the same hairy-arced tunesmith used to go out with one Jennifer Aniston. In fact the whole LA airport smooch came only hours after a tabloid-alleged "love-in" at Courteney's pad featuring Cox, Duritz, Jennifer Aniston and her boyfriend Tate Donovan.

"You know what, Adam is like my best friends - we're really close," explains Courteney, not at all bashful about laying it on the line. "He used to go out whit Jennifer Aniston and they dated for, like, three weeks. It's cool. They're friends now and she's in love whit somebody else and it's been a year." She met Adam through Jennifer, she admits, though only really got to know him when a mutual friend of theirs was hospitalized after a car accident and both she and Adam spent 10 hours a day for two months in a bedside vigil - something that was bound to forget a pretty tight bond. "Adam's special to me, but next thing you know Jennifer and I are having cat fights on the set," she says, mocking the tabloids. "Adam comes to the show, that's cool. she doesn't care. If I fell in love whit Adam she wouldn't care - he's just a great person, a great frined." She is serious for a moment. "The only part that I don't like about being on a really popular show is that your privacy is totally diminished. I cannot have dinner whit anyone without reading that I'm dating that person. I go out on dates but I'm not in a relationship.

"I cant wait to see who'll be written up with me next - maybe it'll be you." Now chance really would be a fine thing, although I learn that if a guy is privileged enough to undertake such as the likelihood of Courteney bursting into tears, for example. "I cry all the time, I;m very focused, but I'm also very confused too," she says. "sometimes I don't trust myself when it comes to my emotions because they can change like the wind." She also mentions a penchant for the fragrant mail bod, which does seem to put a big question mark over the Doritz rumors. "I love it when men smell good," she says. "If it's their own scent, deodorant or whatever, there's something very chemical about it," she enthuses. "Every now and then you'll meet somebody and go: "Oh my God, you smell so good." But above all, if you're going to shape up as Courteney's bloke, you really have to have one thing. "Passion is number one. You gotta be passionate," she declares. "I don't just mean sexually, but passionate about what you do." God I just adore writing... Courteney? Courteney, wait... It's true...