Courteney Cox
After Family Ties, dancing with Bruce Springsteen, and playing Friends' uptight hottie Monica Geller, Cox appeared to be heading for big screen stardom thanks to her break out role in horror film series Scream. But her post-Friends career has been blighted by a series of made-for TV movies (Battling For Baby, anyone?), cancelled shows, bit parts and a patchy tabloid relationship with her Scream co-star David Arquette. But she has one thing going for her: the sitcom Cougar Town, now into its fifth season and still going strong.
Jennifer Aniston
After marrying (and being ditched by) Brad Pitt, Aniston won the title of America's Sweetheart, or Girl Next Door, or desperate lady trying to get remarried and have a baby, depending on the magazines you read. But the woman who made the Rachel haircut "a thing" has been working too. There have been the mass of romcoms, obviously, but Aniston has also surprised - in Horrible Bosses she was a terrifying seductress of a dentist (they are making a sequel now, so there's that to look forward to), she has produced a couple of made-for-TV movies, and then there was the role as a drug-smuggling stripper in We're The Millers...
Lisa Kudrow
Could anyone forget Kudrow's turn in the tragic romcom (although there wasn't much com) P.S. I Love You? Nah, us either. That aside, the actress who played kooky Phoebe has been the quiet achiever of the group. The highlights: The Comeback, a comedy about a one-time sitcom star trying to relaunch her career with a camera crew in tow (seriously, she and Matt LeBlanc should talk more) and Web Therapy, a show now in season five, in which Kudrow plays a therapist who's bored of hearing her patient's problems. May we recommend some music therapy: "Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"
David Schwimmer
Ross was the character you could never admit to liking, and maybe David Schwimmer took that to heart. He's rarely been seen over the past decade, but he's has certainly been heard. A year after Friends wrapped, Schwimmer's voice was instantly recognisable as Melman in the animated film Madagascar, and it turns out the step from slightly neurotic paleontologist to shipwrecked giraffe was a pretty good one - since the initial film, he's done it three more times. He's also done some stage work in London and on Broadway, and appeared in Kudrow's Web Therapy. But Schwimmer has really made his home in the director's chair - he was behind some of Little Britain USA, the Simon Pegg film Run, Fatboy, Run, and sadly (for both of them) LeBlanc's Joey.
- nzherald.co.nz