To our beloved Chandler Bing! Matthew Perry's life in pictures

Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on August 19, 1969, Perry's mother, Suzanne Marie Morrison, was a press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and his father, John Bennett Perry, is a well-known actor.
 

Matthew Perry was a tennis enthusiast. However, acting was his dream from a very young age. Leaving tennis behind, Perry moved to Los Angeles to explore the acting world.
 

He started his career with TV roles. He got his first role as Chazz Russell in the TV series Second Chance at a very young age. Later, he went on to play the role on the revamped version of the show titled Boys Will Be Boys.

In 1988, Perry made his big-screen debut with A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. Written and directed by William Richert, Perry played the role of Fred Roberts.
 

Matthew's career trajectory changed when he got the role of Chandler Bing on the popular '90s sitcom Friends.
The show, which spanned over a decade, also starred Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, and Matt LeBlanc.

Perry was a well-known name in the industry when the makers of Friends, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, approached him to play the role of Chandler Bing in Friends.

Many reports say that for the role that made him famous overnight, Perry had not even given an audition. Additionally, he was the youngest at 24 among the six other members.

“It was as if someone had followed me around for a year, stealing my jokes, copying my mannerisms, and photocopying my world-weary yet witty view of life," he wrote in his 2022 memoir, as per Deadline. “It wasn’t that I thought I could play 'Chandler'; I was Chandler.”

For his role as Chandler Bing on Friends, Perry earned a 2002 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

Perry received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing.
 

Over the years, Perry had several romantic relationships that went on to become headlines. In his 30-year career, the actor has dated Hollywood actresses like Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and others.

Perry's longest relationship was with actress Lizzy Caplan, best known for her work in Mean Girls.

When he was making the entire world laugh with his witty remarks as Chandler Bing, Perry was secretly battling with addiction to painkillers and alcohol and even entered rehab clinics multiple times.

He got addicted to Vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen) after he met with a jet ski accident in 1997. He continued using it even after he didn’t need it.

Recalling how he got addicted, Perry said, “It wasn’t my intention to have a problem with it. But from the start, I liked how it made me feel, and I wanted to get more.”

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry penned down his entire life — from his success to his dating life, regrets, near-death experience, and years-long battle with addiction. In the tell-all memoir, the beloved actor revealed how he "nearly died ” at age 49 after an opioid overdose.