Los Angeles – American-Canadian actor Matthew Perry, who became famous for his role as Chandler Bing in the comedy series Friends, died at the age of 54 on Saturday. This is reported by the TMZ server, according to which Perry apparently drowned. The multiple Emmy-nominated actor has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of his life.
TMZ, citing the police, wrote that Perry was found without signs of life on Saturday at his home in the Los Angeles area of the United States. According to the server’s sources, rescuers rushed to the scene after the cardiac arrest was reported and found the actor in the hot tub.
As Reuters notes, it’s somewhat ironic since the actor’s last Instagram post on Oct. 23 is a photo of him sitting in a hot tub with headphones on. „Ah, so the warm water circling around you will do you good?“ he wrote to her.
„We are incredibly saddened by the untimely passing of Matthew Perry,“ NBC Entertainment, which aired Friends, said in a statement. „With his perfect joke timing and sharp humor, he brought so much joy to hundreds of millions of people around the world. His legacy will live on for countless generations.“
„I will never forget the games we played together in the school yard, and I know that people around the world will never forget the joy he brought them,“ Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on X, expressing shock and sadness at the same time. He knew the native of Massachusetts, USA, in his youth because Perry’s mother was a spokesperson for Trudeau’s father, Pierre, when he was Prime Minister of Canada.
A one-time up-and-coming tennis player who returned to the US as a teenager, Perry won the hearts of audiences around the world as the sarcastic and insecure Chandler Bing, who he portrayed in all 230-plus episodes over ten seasons of Friends. As noted by the AP, the series from 1994 to 2004 made him one of the most prominent characters in Hollywood alongside his Friends colleagues and friends in real life – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer.
The series – originally Friends – has become a cultural phenomenon since its first release. Born in the minds of screenwriters David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the group of young New Yorkers, friends and roommates, influenced the hairstyles, clothes and behavior of many people. For example, the haircut of Aniston, the representative of Rachel, was copied by women and girls all over the world.
The model also became how six friends, initially in their twenties without commitments – and over time with them – live together, change and grow up in Friends. The development was also evident in the character of Chandler, who spent years playing carefree games with his roommate Joey (LeBlanc) and at the end of the series he is the father of children and the husband of Monica (Cox) moving to the suburbs of New York.
One of the most successful television projects broadcast at the turn of the century also found fans among other generations and is still a popular offer on streaming platforms.
Perry also starred in the series The West Wing or a number of films, the most famous of which include the comedy Only Fools Hurry, where his partner was Salma Hayek, or the film My Neighbor the Killer, where he acted alongside Bruce Willis.
According to TMZ, he last appeared in front of the camera during the filming of a miniseries in 2017.
Less than a year ago, his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big, Terrible Thing, was published, in which he recounts repeated addiction treatment. Since he was 26, he has lived alternately in and out of addiction treatment centers, been in rehab fourteen times, completed sixty-five detox programs, and attended more than 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous sessions.
During the third season of Friends, around 1996-1997, according to his memories, he took 55 Vicodin painkillers a day and lost 58 kilos. On the contrary, he weighed almost 50 kilos more in the days when he drank a quarter liter of vodka a day. He abused pills and alcohol during all series of Friends – with the exception of the ninth season, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award.