Farewell Matthew Perry – Chandler Bing of Friends
The source also confirmed Perry’s death to the Los Angeles Times . According to the newspaper, Matthew Perry was found in a hot tub at his home, but no drugs were found at the scene.
A Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson told People that police were called to report the death of a man in his 50s at Perry’s address, but did not confirm the identity of the deceased.
Matthew Perry was born in Massachusetts on August 19, 1969.
He grew up in Ottawa, Canada, where he attended the same elementary school as current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau .
Perry’s mother is Suzanne Morrison, a journalist and press secretary to former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father.
Perry’s stepfather is celebrity journalist Keith Morrison of the show Dateline . His biological father, John Bennett Perry, is an actor and model.
Fame and the tragedy of addiction
Perry moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. He began acting in television and gained attention for his role as Chazz Russell on Boys Will Be Boys (1987–1988). This was followed by roles on Growing Pains and Sydney.
His big career breakthrough came in 1994 with Friends – NBC’s globally iconic sitcom .
Friends was the most popular American television series of the 1990s. It made stars of its main cast including Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston , Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. Some seasons, their salaries reached $1 million per episode.
Thanks to Friends, Matthew Perry’s image is closely associated with the character Chandler Bing – a guy with a sarcastic and humorous personality in the series for 10 seasons. He received an Emmy nomination in 2002.
51 million people watched the finale of Friends
“I was 24 when I started the show. I was 34 when it ended, and those are really important years in everyone’s life,” Perry wrote in her book Friends… ‘Til the End .
Going through such a significant period in the public eye was difficult for Perry.
At first, he felt like, “I’m famous and this is exactly what I’ve wanted all my life.” But then he wanted to become a recluse and “I wish people would stop staring at me.”
Even during the success of Friends, Matthew Perry struggled with addiction, seeking treatment in 1997 and 2001. He told BBC Radio 2 that he had no memory of filming series 3 to 6 of Friends.
In People magazine in 2013, the actor admitted to abusing alcohol and Vicodin, a drug prescribed to him after a 1997 accident.
Things got so bad that Perry couldn’t hide it anymore. To help himself and others, he founded Perry House, an addiction treatment facility in his old Malibu beach house.
“You can’t have a drug problem for 30 years and expect it to be solved in 28 days,” he also told The Hollywood Reporter .
