Courteney Cox Cox was born in Birmingham, Alabama to an affluent Southern family; her late father, Richard L. Cox, was a businessman and her mother, also named Courteney, was a housewife. Cox has two older sisters (Dottie Pickett and Virginia Cox), one older brother (Richard, Jr.) and nine half-brothers and half-sisters. Her parents divorced in 1974, and her father moved to Florida, while Cox grew up with her mother and her stepfather, New York businessman Hunter Copeland.
Cox was raised in an exclusive society town, Mountain Brook, Alabama. She attended Mountain Brook High School, where she was a cheerleader, tennis player and swimmer. Upon graduation, Cox went to study architecture and interior design at Mount Vernon College. She dropped out after one year to pursue a modeling career, after being signed by the Ford modeling agency in New York City. While modeling, she also took acting classes, and lost her Southern accent.