At the age of 54, Matthew Perry passed away on Saturday at his Los Angeles home, according to several publications. 2009 saw the actor at The Invention of Lying’s Los Angeles premiere.
Numerous media outlets have reported the death of actor Matthew Perry, well known for his role as Chandler Bing on the popular TV series Friends. The man’s age was 54.
According to reports from the Los Angeles Times, celebrity website TMZ, and other sources, Perry was discovered dead at his Los Angeles home on Saturday after appearing to have drowned.
When asked if the police had responded to the address that was given as Perry’s residence, LAPD Officer Drake Madison told the AP that they had visited the block “for a death investigation of a male in his 50s.”
At twenty-four, Perry got a gig on the comedy Friends, which launched his career. Over the course of the sitcom’s ten seasons, he played Chandler, a witty and amiable commitment-phobe who eventually fell in love with the type-A Monica Geller (Courteney Cox).
In an interview with Diane Sawyer for ABC News Nightline last year, Perry stated, “I loved Chandler, I loved the show, and I also knew: Remember this, because it’s going to be the best time of your life.”
However, Perry battled addiction behind the scenes. His memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was released last year, revealed details of his decades-long, compulsive use of booze and drugs. In the book, which he dedicated to other addicts, he described his harrowing battle with drug abuse and the health issues that followed: He claimed to have undergone 14 surgeries, detoxed an estimated 65 times, and spent half of his life in treatment.
“The people I would be helping would keep me going whenever I bumped into something that I didn’t really want to share,” the actor said in a New York Times interview last year.
During his time on set, Perry talked about his unhealthy relationship with his work and how he attempted to hide his addiction.
“If the live audience didn’t laugh, I felt like I was going to die, and that’s not healthy for sure,” Perry stated in his memoir. “Yet occasionally, I could recite a line and the crowd would not laugh, even though I would sometimes perspire and experience convulsions. I would lose it if I didn’t laugh as hard as I was meant to. Every night I felt like that. I felt really down because of this pressure. Of the six people I was aware of who were involved in making the show, just one was ill.”
The Nightline program featured a remark from friend and co-star Lisa Kudrow, who stated, “Matthew Perry was always the one trying to keep everyone else happy.”
In addition to receiving two Emmy nominations for his Friends role, Perry’s pivotal position as associate White House counsel on The West Wing earned him two more nominations.
Along with her acting career, Perry starred in a number of films, including the TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Fools Rush In, The Whole Nine Yards, and 17 Again.
The actor was reared throughout Canada, frequently bouncing between the Los Angeles and Montreal residences of his divorced parents, despite being born in Massachusetts. He rose to the top of the Canadian junior tennis rankings.
The Times said that the actor later in life took up pickleball, even having a court constructed at his new Pacific Palisades house.
