Matthew Perry (1969-2023): The tragic life of a man who made everyone laugh out loud

Matthew Perry (1969-2023):Life can be ironic at most times. A man who made millions the world over laugh with his character in an iconic show had one of the most tragic lives in real life. Matthew Perry-,an actor who made Chandler Bing from Friends one of the most iconic characters on television the world over, is dead. Perry was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Saturday. According to an initial investigation, the actor reportedly died of drowning ina hot tub at his LA home. The police have ruled out any kind of foul play. He was 54.

In the early 1990s, Perry was already a well-known face on TV when Marta Kauffman and David Crane approached him to play the part of Chandler Bing in Friends. Many reports say he was the only actor who had not auditioned for the role and also was the youngest at 24 to be cast as the sarcastic, insecure Chandler Bing.

RIP Chandler Bing: Tributes pour in for Friends star Matthew Perry

Friends and Matthew Perry's initial years of stardom

Friends famouslymade all six of its lead actors- Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt le Blanc, Lisa Kudrow and Perry - overnight superstars of television and their popularity was not only limited to America but spread worldwide. Friends ran for a successful 10 season and in 2004 when the show finally aired its final season, it led to mass depression,as fans worldwide bid tearful farewell to their beloved friends on TV.



Friends captured the imagination of the audience like no other show ever did. The six actors made their characters iconic. Perry played Chandler Bing with so much perfection that it felt like an extension of his real self. There were similarities. Perry was a stand-up comedian, known for his sarcastic repartees off-screen much like Chandler's one-liners on screen. Much like his character Chandler, Perry too came from a broken home and stemmed into years of mental health issues.

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The troubled years of addiction

In his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir released in 2022, he admitted that despite earning huge popularity for Friends, he could not bring himself to watch the hit sitcom because it reminded him of the tough times he went through due to his addiction problem.

"I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine,” he later added.“I could tell season by season by how I looked. That’s why I don’t wanna watch it, because that’s what I see.”

Perry got first addicted to Vicodin after a jet-ski accident in 1997 and completed a 28-day rehab programme that year. Avid viewers of Friends would recall his weight fluctuated throughout the running of the show. Many also cite Perry's hard-partying days as one of the reasons for his addiction.

His weight dropped to 145 pounds (66 kg) due to pancreatitis in the later years. He entered rehab in February 2001 for an addiction to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines, and alcohol. Perry later estimated he had spent $9 million to get sober.



He had even admitted that due to his addiction problem, he could not remember three years of the time he was acting on Friends, between seasons three and six.

Rehab, mental illness and more

Perry also recalls how fame and stardom due to Friends made him lonely. "I was in the white-hot flame of fame. The six of us were just everywhere all the time. From an outsider's perspective, it would seem like I had it all. It was actually a very lonely time for me because I was suffering from alcoholism. It was going on before Friends, but it's a progressive disease. I wasn't a massive party guy. I wasn't a bull-in-a-china-shop kind of drinker," the actor had recalled in the later years.

Amid visits to the rehab - first in 1997 and 2001- Perry dabbled a full-fledged, successful acting career. Friends was under production and at its peak - in terms of popularity and Perry also featured in several feature films.



In between his first and second trips to rehab, Perry ended up in hospital for two weeks with acute pancreatitis and lost 20 pounds. The condition is reportedly caused by both alcohol abuse and prescription drug abuse.

Friends star Matthew Perry reportedly dead at 54: Here's a look at his movies, TV shows

Soon after being released from hospital, Perry crashed his Porsche into an empty house. The actor was not under the influence of alcohol and drugs. "I made the first corner around my house on these really narrow streets, saw a courier van in the middle, swerved to the right and — well, I don't really know what happened — I crashed into this porch."

Perry subsequently checked into rehab again in 2011 and in later years spoke openly about his addiction, in an attempt to help others suffering like him. He even turned his Malibu home into a rehab facility for those who wanted to get sober. He eventually had to sell the property due to financial issues.

Perry told People in 2013 that his struggles were hard to mask. "I couldn't stop. Eventually, things got so bad that I couldn't hide it, and then everybody knew." He said he never used drugs or abused alcohol while on set. "I was never high at work," he said. "I was painfully hungover."

Addiction also posed a threat to his love life. Perry had been in a relationship with Yasmine Bleeth in 1995, Julia Roberts from 1995 to 1996, and Lizzy Caplan from 2006 to 2012. In November 2020, Perry became engaged to literary manager Molly Hurwitz. The couple ended their engagement in 2021. While it was never openly discussed as to what led to the fallout with each of his girlfriends, but rumours were rife that his near and dear ones cited that addiction led to cracks in each of his relationships.

Years after Friends

Post Friends, Perry's career never witnessed the same high as it had when he was working on the show. Sure, he was part of several shows like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Odd Couple and films like The Triumph (he earned The Golden Globes and Emmy nominations for this one), Birds of America and 17 Again but none fetched him that stardom that he had once seen during Friends.

When the much-acclaimed Friends reunion happened in 2021, Matthew looked a far cry from the exuberant charming Chandler he had played on-screen years back. Instead, the actor struggled to speak coherently - due to an emergency dental surgery a few days prior to the filming of the show - and appeared more pensive than his other co-stars on the show. He even spoke about battling depression during the filming of a hit sitcom - a fact that many of his co-actors did not know until the reunion.



In his memoir, Matthew admitted that while everyone was "sobbing" over the final episode of Friends in 2004, he was "numb" and felt "nothing." The irony is not lost on anyone. The man who made millions fall for his character made sarcasm fashionable, and made everyone laugh with his one-liners- was a lonely man fighting too many demons to really smile through the struggles of life.