Struggles with alcohol and painkiller addictions
Last year, Perry released a memoir titled Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, where he details his career and struggles with addiction and sobriety.
Matthew Perry was cast in Friends when he was 24 years old. (Supplied: IMDB)
According to AFP, Perry had battled for years with addiction to painkillers and alcohol, and attended rehabilitation clinics on multiple occasions.
TMZ reported that no drugs were found at the scene on Saturday.
During a recent televised Friends reunion, Perry surprised his co-stars by admitting to having suffered severe anxiety «every night» during filming.
«Friends was huge. I couldn’t jeopardise that. I loved the script. I loved my co-actors. I loved the scripts. I loved everything about the show but I was struggling with my addictions, which only added to my sense of shame,» he wrote in his memoir.
«I had a secret and no one could know.
«I felt like I was gonna die if the live audience didn’t laugh, and that’s not healthy for sure. But I could sometimes say a line and the audience wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and sometimes go into convulsions.
«If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get I would freak out. I felt that every single night. This pressure left me in a bad place. I also knew of the six people making that show, only one of them was sick.»
Matthew Perry, the star of Friends, drowned in the bathtub
Goodbye to Matthew Perry, the actor who won the hearts of millions in the role of Chandler in ‘Friends’: the star has died at the age of 54, apparently drowned in a hot tub. The news was reported by the gossip site TMZ and the LA Times. Curious that his last post on Instagram was in a bathtub.
The actor was found in his home in Los Angeles, found by rescuers called for a heart attack. No drugs or traces of an erotic game gone wrong were found on the spot. Matthew Perry was famous throughout the world for his role in the hit 90s sitcom, which aired for 10 seasons and in which he took part in all 234 episodes.
Affable, optimistic and ready to joke on screen, Matthew had recently opened up about his personal difficulties, in particular his addiction to drugs and alcohol: A heartbreakingly beautiful memoir (“Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing”) in which he shared shocking details about his life and past troubles. (Time.news)BIA
The son of separated parents (his father had abandoned his mother when he was a child), he learned early to use humor to get his mother’s attention. At 14, his first encounter with alcohol and realizing that it “had a completely different effect” on him compared to his friends. while they had vomited, he “lying on the grass” had felt a sensation of well-being: “Nothing bothered me”. From that moment on, he started drinking and never stopped. When he got the role of Chandler Bing, he was already an alcoholic. Even though Perry tried to hide his condition, his castmates (Jennifer Aniston, in particular) had been “understanding and patient.”
“It’s like penguins: when one is sick or injuredthe others surround him and support him, they walk around him until the penguin can walk on his own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.” So for years Perry had alternated between rehab and filming. The only season in which he had been sober the entire time was the ninth; “And guess which one I was nominated for? as best actor? Maybe he should have told me something.”
Matthew Perry’s addiction to alcohol worsened in 1997 after an accident on a jet ski: due to some very painful injuries, he began using an opioid painkiller, Vicodin, and at times took up to 55 pills a day. In 2018, when he was 49 years old, the actor suffered a gastrointestinal perforation caused by the extreme use of opioids. “After two weeks in a coma, my family was told I had only a two percent chance of surviving.” He made it, but while he recovered and the colon healed, the actor had to use a colostomy bag and in that long period, almost a year, he woke up covered in his own feces “50 to 60” times .
In recent months, when he appeared disheveled and overweight in public, he had raised fears that he had fallen back into old habits. Earlier in the week, he was spotted at a restaurant in Los Angeles, The Apple Pan, out for lunch with a friend, disheveled and looking dejected. Curious that the latest post on Instagram shows him immersed in a hydromassage tub: he relaxes at night, wearing headphones for music, while looking at the city. A caption next to it. “Oh, so swirling hot water makes you feel good? I’m Mattman”: a reference that followers immediately linked to his desire to play Batman, the fictional superhero.
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Moved from Canada to LA to pursue acting
As Chandler, he played a sarcastic yet insecure and neurotic roommate of Joey, and Ross’s college friend.
The series was one of television’s biggest hits and has taken on a new life — and found surprising popularity with younger fans — in recent years on streaming services.
The series ran from 1994 until 2004.
Perry received one Emmy nomination for his Friends role and two more for appearances as an associate White House counsel on The West Wing.
Friends ran for 10 seasons. (Supplied)
When he was 15, Perry moved to LA to pursue acting and also appeared in TV Shows Boys Will Be Boys, Growing Pains, Ally McBeal, The West Wing and Scrubs and films such as The Whole Nine Yards, 17 Again, Fools Rush In and Three To Tango.
The Plymouth, Massachusetts-born actor grew up in Ottawa, Canada after his mother, a Canadian journalist who once served as press secretary to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, divorced Perry’s father and married a Canadian broadcast personality.
Mr Trudeau’s son and incumbent Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid tribute to his boyhood friend, calling Perry’s death «shocking and saddening».
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