29 October 2023 , 11:17
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The late Friends star Matthew Perry made several bombshell revelations about his life last year in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
Perry, who starred as Chandler Bing in the US sitcom, was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Saturday evening (local time) after reportedly drowning in his hot tub. Police sources have indicated that no drugs were found at the scene and there is no indication of foul play concerning the 54-year old.
Last year the actor, who was said to be clean for 18 months at the time, discussed details of his addiction, which had previously been private. Perry also detailed his brief relationship with Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts, and revealed the names of two other Hollywood A-listers he romanced during his career.
Addiction battles
In a somewhat frank introduction to his memoir, Perry opened: "Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead."
The statement set the tone for large parts of the publication, which began with him detailing his first drink at 14 to shelling out a staggering $7 million (£5.7 million) in trying to get sober.
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"I have spent upward of $7 million trying to get sober," he confessed. "I have been to six thousand AA meetings. (Not an exaggeration, more an educated guess.) I've been to rehab fifteen times. I've been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death's door."
Matthew Perry nearly died and spent weeks in a coma after suffering a huge set back in his recoveryPerry went on to describe a horrific incident in 2018 that saw his colon "explode" from opioid use, which left in a coma for two weeks during a five-month hospital admission. It also left him requiring a colostomy bag for nine months as part of his recovery.
"I had been on opiates, and off opiates, and back on different opiates for so long that I suffered from a situation that only a subset of the population gets," he wrote. "Opiates cause constipation. It's kind of poetic. I was so full of shit it almost killed me."
The episode left Perry with doctors giving him a two per cent chance of survival, something he admitted he would have to "live out the rest of my days knowing that my mother and others heard those words".
Heart-stopping moment
Matthew Perry revealed in his 2022 memoir that a drug reaction ruled him out of an Oscar-nominated moviePerry landed a role alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep in 2021's Netflix sci-fi film, Don't Look Up - but a huge medical scare put paid to his appearance. In the year previous during an admission to a Switzerland treatment centre, Perry confessed to lying about symptoms in order to receive a hydrocodone prescription.
Use of the drug, coupled with propofol administered for one of the star's countless surgeries, almost proved fatal. Perry explained: "I was given the shot at 11am. I woke up 11 hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes."
He continued: "Nothing had been beating. I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn't want the guy from Friends dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn't been on Friends, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?"
Resuscitation left Perry with eight broken ribs, and with "too much pain" to star in the Oscar-nominated flick, something he described as "heartbreaking".
Julia Roberts romance
Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts dated in real life (GETTY)Perry hooked up with Roberts, two years his senior, after she guest-starred in Friends in January 1996. Although the relationship lasted a mere two months, Perry did go as far as "meeting the parents" on the family's New Year family trip to New Mexico.
He wrote in the memoir: "We jumped in this big blue truck and drove up a mountain, snow swirling around. Eventually we reached a mountaintop, and for a moment the weather cleared, and we could see New Mexico and beyond, all the way back to Canada. As we sat there, she made me feel like the king of the world. A gentle snow was falling, and with that, 1996 began."
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Sweating over his insecurities, however, Perry said he broke off from the A-lister because the relationship was just "too much" for him to handle. "I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me," he admitted. "Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts."
Secret Hollywood relationships
Roberts wasn't Perry's only Hollywood A-list fling, meanwhile. For in 1994 the actor said he shared a kiss with Gwyneth Paltrow in a closet whilst performing in a play close to the actress.
"At some big party we slipped off into a broom cupboard and made out," he said. "We were both still unknown enough that it didn't make it to the tabloids." Perry also opened up about a date with There's Something About Mary star, Cameron Diaz, not long after she split from singer Justin Timberlake.
Perry wrote: "The date was at a dinner party with a bunch of other people, but upon seeing me, Cameron got almost instantly stoned. It was clear that she wasn't interested in me at all."
Asking out Friends co-star
Matthew Perry first met Jennifer Aniston three years before they landed their Friends roles (Getty Images)
Sadly for Perry Aniston knocked back his advances (Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)Perry actually met his Friends co-star, Jennifer Aniston three years before the sitcom was devised. It was during a meeting through a mutual acquaintance at that time that he admitted to being "immediately taken by her".
Believing the feelings were mutual, Perry asked Aniston out on a date, something she turned down. "But she said she'd love to be friends with me," Perry said. "And I compounded the compound by blurting, 'We can't be friends!'"
Admitting he was still attracted to her by the time they landed their Friends roles, he added: "We were able to sail right past the past and focus on the fact that we had both gotten the best job Hollywood had to offer."
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