Courteney Cox

When Friends was casting in 1994, Cox turned down the audition for Rachel Green and asked to read for Monica Geller instead, the controlling, competitive one the producers hadn't fully figured out yet. She got the part, and spent ten seasons making Monica the emotional spine of the show. By the final two seasons, she and her five castmates each earned $1 million per episode. The Guinness Book certified her as one of the highest-paid TV actresses of all time. Nobody mentioned the casting gamble after that.

She's the only actor to appear in all seven Scream films, Gale Weathers surviving every sequel from 1996 through the seventh installment. That franchise is her main credential outside Friends, along with Cougar Town, which ran six seasons and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in Comedy. She's moved into directing with Evil Genius, a true crime film about the 2003 pizza bomber case, starring Patricia Arquette and David Harbour. Her lifestyle brand Homecourt landed on Fast Company's most innovative companies list. The portfolio keeps widening, which is either ambition or an acknowledgment that nothing since Monica has quite landed the same way.

In 1984, Brian De Palma pulled Cox from a casting call to appear in Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" video as the fan dragged onstage to dance. De Palma had already told Springsteen who to pick before the cameras rolled. That video came a full decade before Friends. On the TV show Who Do You Think You Are?, Cox traced her ancestry and found she's a direct descendant of William the Conqueror and King Edward I of England, which is either remarkable or just what happens when you follow any Anglo-American lineage back far enough.