Before Friends: A guest appearance on NYPD Blue and the sitcom flop Monty
Family Life: Dating Playboy model Carla Alapont, 25, for more than a year
Best Friends Moment: Ross's long-anticipated first kiss with Rachel
What's Next?: Producing and directing in film, TV and theater

Yes, Ross has been very, very good to him – $1 million-an-episode good. But for David Schwimmer, playing lovelorn paleontologist Ross Gellar for the past nine years has not been without exasperation. Like, for instance, when he turned up at Northwestern University in May to raise money for Lookingglass Theatre, a Chicago company he helped found pre-Friends. Before he could make his speech, the students began pelting him with questions about Jennifer Aniston's kissability and Matt LeBlanc's wedding. "There was kind of a tension in the air," says Chris Jones, a Chicago Tribune arts reporter who has known Schwimmer for almost 10 years. "He wanted to be seen as himself, and there was a faction that night that saw him as a character."

It's a problem that's not likely to go away anytime soon – which is why, perhaps, Schwimmer aims to focus on more behind-the-scenes work. "I hope to be directing, acting, producing," Schwimmer, 36, said at the Emmys. Not that the star, who has directed Friends and will likely do the same with LeBlanc's spin-off Joey, plans to ditch his alter ego entirely: "I'll probably bring the character to (Joey)."

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