'I should be dead by now': Matthew Perry published a memoir in which he told shocking facts

“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by a different name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead by now,” Matthew Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, begins with this phrase. What the actor said in his book, writes Meduza.

Photo: IStock

The whole world knows Matthew Perry as Chandler from Friends. But this jolly fellow from his favorite sitcom has a life story that is not at all funny.

The world saw his life story only on November 1, but she had already managed to shake her frankness. The book became the most anticipated this year and immediately topped the sales list upon its release.

Perry spoke very frankly not only about his acting career, but also about romantic relationships, as well as alcohol and drug addiction, which accompanies him all his life.

Dependence

For the first time, the actor tried alcohol at the age of 14. And by the age of 18, he was drinking on an ongoing basis.

After the second season of "Friends", the actor went to Las Vegas (Nevada) to shoot the film "Hurry up - make people laugh" with Salma Hayek. There, on a jet ski, he had an accident. To overcome the pain, he was prescribed Vicodin. This began his dependence on the pills.

There were days when he took up to 55 doses of this drug per day. To get the pills, he feigned pains and migraines at doctor's appointments and even climbed into other people's houses and rummaged through first-aid kits.

Over the course of his life, the actor attended 6 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, went through rehab 15 times, detoxified 65 times, was on a life support machine, underwent 14 surgeries (the last in January 2022) and spent from 7 to 9 million dollars to get rid of from dependencies.

In 2018, Perry underwent another operation due to a ruptured colon caused by taking OxyContin. Matthew spent two weeks in a coma. Doctors estimated his chances of life at 2%. For the next nine months, he lived with a colostomy bag, but he regularly turned to dealers: “Street pills cost about $75 apiece, so I gave the guy $3 at a time, several times a week.”

After that, the actor again went to a rehabilitation center. One day in the middle of the night, he went out into the hallway and just started banging his head against the wall.

“I’ll never be able to explain what happened, but I suddenly started banging my head against the wall as hard as I could. There was blood everywhere. After about eight of these mind-numbing blows, someone finally listened and stopped me with the only logical question, “Why are you doing this?” I stared and said, 'Because I couldn't think of anything better,'" Perry recalls.

In 2020, the actor was in a rehabilitation center in Switzerland. But even there, he feigned pain so that the doctors would give him a dose of OxyContin or ketamine.

In the same year, he underwent another operation, during which he was injected with propofol. The actor woke up 11 hours later in another hospital. As it turned out, because of the propofol, his heart stopped for five minutes.

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The actor returned to Los Angeles (California) on a private flight for $175, but the hospital refused to give him OxyContin. That same evening, he booked another $175 charter back to Switzerland.

Work and money

Matthew almost missed out on the Friends audition as he was already cast in LAX 2194. But in the end, he abandoned filming in this project and began acting in Friends. At first, he received $ 22,5 thousand per episode. By 2001, during the filming of the eighth season, all the main actors received one million dollars.

“By the tenth season, we were earning even more: we received $ 1 per episode and asked to shoot fewer episodes,” writes Perry.

The actor mentions David Schwimmer (Ros) and praises him very much for the fact that he was the one who negotiated the salaries for all the actors.

Perry even bought himself an apartment for $20 million, and only because Bruce Wayne had one in The Dark Knight.

The actor received $1 million for the movie Hurry, You Make People Laugh. For another 1997 film, Almost Heroes, where Perry played in tandem with comedian Chris Farley, he received $2 million. Farley died at the age of 33 from a drug overdose. before the release of the picture.

“His disease progressed faster than mine. Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word “heroin.” He didn't share my fear. I punched a hole in the wall of Jennifer Aniston's dressing room when I heard about what happened. I got to do the Almost Heroes campaign two weeks after Farley died. And I found myself publicly discussing his death from drugs and alcohol. I was high all this time,” notes the actor.

In 2006, Matthew was offered the lead role in the TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He received $50 per episode. But the series was closed after the first season (22 episodes), it was recognized as one of the worst series.

In 2016, Perry made his debut as a theater director in London with the comedy play The End of Longing, playing the title role himself.

Relationships with women

The actor said that he was always afraid of being abandoned, so very often he himself ended the relationship. For example, in 1995 he dated Julia Roberts.

Their romance began by fax - they sent each other poems and tender messages. In the second season of Friends, Roberts appeared as a guest star in an episode of the series. According to Perry, she agreed to the shooting on the condition that her storyline would involve Chandler Bing. And already in 1996, the actor announced that their relationship had ended.

Perry once kissed Gwyneth Paltrow, but then they were not popular enough for it to get into the press.

He also spoke about a date with Cameron Diaz, who had just broken up with Justin Timberlake. During dinner, the actress "almost instantly got high" and accidentally punched him in the face.

In 1990, on the set of the TV series Sydney, the actor fell in love with his partner Valerie Bertinelli, who was then married to musician Eddie Van Halen.

The actor claims that he even kissed her in their house when her husband was unconscious due to alcohol. But the next day, Bertinelli pretended that nothing had happened.

“I quickly took the hint and also got used to the role, but inside I was devastated,” Perry admitted.

Filming "Friends"

The actor says that his addictions were very much reflected in how his character looked.

“You can trace the trajectory of my addiction if you compare my weight from season to season: when I get fat, it's alcohol; when I lose weight - these are pills. When I have a goatee beard, it means a lot of pills, ”he explains.

At the same time, the actor says that he never worked on the site stoned or drunk, usually it was with a hangover.

Once Jennifer Aniston (Rachel Green) came to him and said: "I know that you drink." When he began to make excuses, she added in a strange but loving tone, "We can smell it."

“That ‘we’ in the plural hit me like a sledgehammer,” the actor admitted.

In the seventh season, he was brought to the set directly from the rehabilitation center.

Between the eighth and ninth season, he again got there, but then the whole world found out about it.

When the actors arrived for the first reading, the atmosphere was tense, everyone was looking at Perry. Then producer Kevin Bright asked the crowd, "Does anyone want to talk about their vacation?" and the actor took the opportunity to ease the tension in the room. He deliberately loudly and firmly answered: “Okay! I will begin!"

The show's ninth season was the only one in which Perry was completely sober. At the same time, he was nominated for an Emmy for the only time for his role in Friends. In his memoirs, the actor repeatedly thanks his partners for supporting him in the most difficult times.

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In 2001, Sean Penn guest-starred on Friends. The authors came up with a scene between Penn and Perry that breaks the metaphorical fourth wall. In it, Chandler Bing, dressed in a Halloween bunny costume, stops the character of Sean Penn, as if between the filming of the series:

“Shawn, can I distract you for a second?”

"Sure, Matthew, what's the matter?"

Well, I've been thinking about it a lot. And you seem like a good person to talk about it.

I finish smoking, put out the cigarette with my huge rabbit paw and say:

— I would like to switch to dramatic work.

Sean Penn looks me up and down for a long time and says:

- Good luck.

And although this double turned out to be very successful, they decided not to include it in the series so as not to break the rules of the show.

In the final episode of Friends, Chandler Bing delivers the final line. Matthew Perry personally asked show co-creator Martha Kauffman about it.

About other shoots

In 2000, Matthew Perry became friends with Bruce Willis during the filming of The Nine Yards. The actor strongly doubted the success of the picture. Then Perry decided to argue with him: if the film becomes a hit, Willis will appear as a guest star in Friends. As a result, he starred in three episodes of the sixth season.

In 2002, on the set of Fraudsters with Elizabeth Hurley in Dallas, Perry took methadone (to get rid of his addiction to Vicodin), Xanax, cocaine and drank a liter of vodka a day. The film was discontinued when the actor was again in a rehabilitation center. He was sued for downtime in filming, which cost him $650.

“A small price to pay for saving my life,” he writes.

He later had to re-voice all his lines for the film because his speech on set was too slurred.

In 2021, Perry wanted to star in Don't Look Up, but ended up pulling out due to health concerns. He managed to do a group scene with Jonah Hill, but she was cut in the final cut. During that shoot, he claimed to have taken 1800 milligrams of hydrocodone.

Shortly before the Friends reunion special (released in 2021), Perry was in good shape and even quit smoking after several sessions of hypnosis, although he had previously smoked 60 cigarettes a day. But suddenly he needed emergency dental care.

“I took a bite of peanut butter-slathered toast and my top teeth fell out. The dentist had to remove all my teeth, including the implants driven into the jaw, and then replace them with new ones, ”Perry admitted.

That is why the speech of the actor on the set of the special episode was so slurred.

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