Matthew Perry

Matthew Langford Perry (August 19, 1969 – October 28, 2023) was an American and Canadian actor. Known primarily for his work in comedy, he gained international fame for starring as Chandler Bing on the NBC television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), receiving his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2002 for the role. Perry also appeared on Ally McBeal (2002), The West Wing (2003) and The Ron Clark Story (2006) receiving Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in the latter two. He played a leading role in the NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–2007), and also became known for his leading film roles in Fools Rush In (1997), Almost Heroes (1998), Three to Tango (1999), The Whole Nine Yards (2000), Serving Sara (2002), The Whole Ten Yards (2004), and 17 Again (2009).

Perry was the co-creator, co-writer, executive producer and star of the ABC sitcom Mr. Sunshine, which ran from February to April 2011. In August 2012, he starred as sportscaster Ryan King on the NBC sitcom Go On. He co-developed and starred in a revival of the CBS sitcom The Odd Couple portraying Oscar Madison from 2015 to 2017. He had recurring roles in the legal dramas The Good Wife (2012–2013), and The Good Fight (2017). Perry portrayed Ted Kennedy in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017) and appeared as himself in his final television appearance, Friends: The Reunion (2021). He voiced Benny in the video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010).

For most of his life, Perry suffered from severe addictions to drugs and alcohol. Through his recovery, he became an advocate for rehabilitation and a spokesperson for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. In 2013, Perry received the Champion of Recovery Award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2022, he released his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

He died on October 28, 2023, at age 54, from the acute effects of ketamine use, exacerbated by accidental drowning. Five people were charged in connection with helping him acquire lethal doses of the drug; all five pleaded guilty and were sentenced to house arrest or prison. Perry's portrayal of Chandler Bing was regarded as one of television's most recognizable comic performances. Critics noted his precision timing and a distinctive cadence that was widely imitated and quoted, and that he brought a rare strain of vulnerability to the sitcom archetype.

Matthew Langford Perry was born on August 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His mother, Suzanne Marie Morrison (née Langford, born 1943), is a Canadian journalist who was press secretary to Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. His father, John Bennett Perry (born 1941), is an American actor and former model.

Perry's parents separated when he was a year old and his mother married Canadian broadcast journalist Keith Morrison. Perry was mostly raised by his mother in Ottawa, Ontario, but he also lived briefly in Toronto and Montreal. He attended Rockcliffe Park Public School and Ashbury College, a boarding school in Ottawa. He had four younger maternal half-siblings—Caitlin, Emily, Will, and Madeline—as well as a younger paternal half-sister named Maria. His siblings "would stand and applaud" him for early performances.

By the age of 10, Perry started misbehaving. He stole money, smoked, let his grades slip and beat up fellow student and future Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Perry later attributed his behavior to his feeling like a family outsider who no longer belonged once his mother began having children with Morrison. He wrote, "I was so often on the outside looking in, still that kid up in the clouds on a flight to somewhere else, unaccompanied." At age 14, Perry began consuming alcohol, and was drinking every day by his 18th birthday. He practiced tennis, often for 10 hours per day, and became a top-ranked junior player in Canada with the possibility of a tennis career. However, his prospects diminished when he moved from Ottawa, at age 15, to live with his father in Los Angeles, where competition was much tougher.

At 15, Perry began studying acting at the Buckley School, a college-preparatory school in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1987. While in high school, he took improvisational comedy classes at L.A. Connection in Sherman Oaks.

Perry's first credited role was a small part in 240-Robert in 1979 as a child actor. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, Perry started auditioning for roles. Perry made guest appearances on Not Necessarily the News in 1983, Charles in Charge in 1985, and Silver Spoons in 1986. In 1987 and 1988, he played Chazz Russell in the television series Second Chance (later called Boys Will Be Boys). Perry made his film debut in 1988 with A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. In 1989, he had a three-episode arc on Growing Pains, portraying Carol Seaver's boyfriend Sandy, who dies in a drunk driving incident.

Perry was cast as a regular on the 1990 CBS sitcom Sydney, playing the younger brother of Valerie Bertinelli's character. In 1991, he made a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 as Roger Azarian. Perry played the starring role in the ABC sitcom Home Free, which aired in 1993.

Perry's commitment to a pilot for a sitcom called LAX 2194, set in the baggage handling department of Los Angeles Airport 200 years in the future, initially made him unavailable for a role in another pilot, Six of One, later called Friends. After the LAX 2194 pilot fell through, he had the opportunity to read for a part in Six of One and was cast as Chandler Bing. At age 24, he was the youngest member of the main cast. After making the pilot and while waiting for the show to air, Perry spent the summer of 1993 performing at the Williamstown Theater Festival alongside Gwyneth Paltrow.

Friends was hugely successful, and it made Perry an international celebrity. By 2002, he and his co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer were making $1 million per episode. The program earned him an Emmy nomination in 2002 for the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series award. Perry appeared in films such as Fools Rush In, Almost Heroes, Three to Tango, The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards, and Serving Sara.

For his performance as Joe Quincy in The West Wing, Perry received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2003 and 2004. He appeared as attorney Todd Merrick in two episodes of Ally McBeal. In 2004, he made his directorial debut and acted in an episode of the fourth season of the comedy-drama Scrubs, an episode which included his father.

Perry starred in the TNT movie The Ron Clark Story, which premiered August 13, 2006, and received a Golden Globe and Emmy nomination for his performance. From 2006 to 2007, he appeared in Aaron Sorkin's drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Perry played Matt Albie alongside Bradley Whitford's Danny Tripp, a writer-director duo brought in to help save a failing sketch show.

In 2006, Perry began filming Numb, a film based on a man suffering from depersonalization disorder. The release was postponed several times, but it was finally released on DVD on May 13, 2008. Perry also appeared on stage in London in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. In 2008, Perry starred in the independent film Birds of America. Showtime passed on a pilot called The End of Steve, a dark comedy starring, written, and produced by Perry and Peter Tolan.

In 2009, Perry starred in the film 17 Again playing a 37-year-old man who transforms into his 17-year-old self (Zac Efron) after an accident. The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office success. A review on WRC-TV found Perry miscast in his role, emphasizing the disbelief in Efron growing up to resemble Perry, both physically and behaviorally — a sentiment echoed by other critics.

In 2009, Perry was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, when he presented Ellen DeGeneres with an Xbox 360 video game console and a copy of the game Fallout 3. The gesture led to game studio Obsidian Entertainment casting him in Fallout: New Vegas as the voice of Benny.

Perry's new comedy pilot, Mr. Sunshine, based on his original idea for the show, was bought by ABC. He played the lead role as a middle-aged man with an identity crisis. ABC canceled the series after nine episodes in 2011.

Perry held American citizenship by birth and Canadian citizenship through his mother. He dated Yasmine Bleeth in 1995, Julia Roberts from 1995 to 1996, and Lizzy Caplan from 2006 to 2012. In November 2020, Perry became engaged to literary manager Molly Hurwitz. Their engagement ended in 2021. Perry never married or had any children.

Residences owned at some point by Perry included a condo in Sierra Towers purchased from Elton John, a house in Hollywood Hills, a house in Malibu, and a cottage in Pacific Palisades. In 2017, Perry purchased a condo occupying the top floor of The Century in Los Angeles for $20 million, selling it to Nick Molnar for $21.6 million in 2021. In June 2023, Perry purchased a mid-century modern house in Hollywood Hills.

In his memoirs, Perry wrote that by age 14, he had become an alcoholic. He became addicted to Vicodin after a jet ski accident in 1997 and completed a 28-day rehab program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation that year. His weight dropped to 128 pounds (58 kg) as he took as many as 55 Vicodin pills per day. In May 2000, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with alcohol-induced pancreatitis.

Perry said in 2002 that he made an effort not to drink on the set of Friends but arrived with extreme hangovers and sometimes would shake or sweat excessively. During later seasons, he was frequently drunk or high on set. His castmates made efforts to help him, and staged an intervention, but were unsuccessful.

In February 2001, Perry paused productions of Friends and Serving Sara for two months to enter in-patient rehabilitation for his addictions to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines and alcohol. He said later that, due to his substance use disorder, he had no memory of three years of his work on Friends.

In 2018, Perry spent five months in a hospital for a gastrointestinal perforation. During the hospital stay, Perry nearly died after his colon burst from opioid abuse. He spent two weeks in a coma and used a colostomy bag for nine months. Doctors told his family that Perry had a 2% chance of survival when he was admitted. He was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine.

Perry faked pain to get a prescription for 1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone per day and was having daily ketamine infusions. He was given propofol in conjunction with a surgery, which stopped his heart for five minutes. The resulting CPR resulted in eight broken ribs. He paid $175,000 for a private jet to take him to Los Angeles to get more drugs. When doctors there refused, he booked another $175,000 private flight to fly back to Switzerland that night. In 2022, he estimated that he had spent $9 million on his addiction, including 14 stomach surgeries, 15 stays in rehab and therapy twice a week for 30 years and had attended approximately 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In July 2011, Perry lobbied the United States Congress as a celebrity spokesperson for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in support of funding for drug courts. He received a Champion of Recovery award in May 2013 from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for opening Perry House, a rehab center in his former mansion in Malibu. In 2015, Perry sold the mansion and relocated its services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he launched an apparel line inspired by Friends, with proceeds donated to the World Health Organization's COVID-19 relief fund.

On October 28, 2023, Perry was found unresponsive in a jacuzzi at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. He was pronounced dead at 4:17 pm the same day. He was 54 years old.

On November 3, 2023, Perry's funeral was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles where he was buried. His father, mother and stepfather attended, as did his five Friends co-stars. The Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song "Don't Give Up" was played; Perry was enamored of the song and referenced it in signed copies of his autobiography, released in part to help people suffering from depression or addiction issues. Following Perry's death, the National Philanthropic Trust established the Matthew Perry Foundation to support people suffering from addiction.

On December 15, 2023, Perry's death was revealed to have occurred due to acute effects of ketamine. Other circumstances that contributed to his death included the effects of buprenorphine, drowning, and coronary artery disease. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner said in a statement that

...at the high levels of ketamine found in his post-mortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression... ...drowning contributes due to the likelihood of submersion into the pool as he lapsed into unconsciousness; coronary artery disease contributes due to exacerbation of ketamine induced myocardial effects on the heart.

Perry had been receiving ketamine-assisted psychotherapy sessions to treat anxiety. His last known session occurred the week before his death. However, the report stated that the ketamine in his system at death could not be from that infusion, since ketamine's half-life is 3 to 4 hours or less.

Perry's portrayal of Chandler Bing on Friends (1994–2004) became one of television's most recognizable comic performances. Critics noted his precision timing and a distinctive "could I be any more…?" cadence that was widely imitated and quoted, and that he brought a rare strain of vulnerability to the sitcom archetype.

Beyond acting, Perry advocated for addiction recovery. In 2013 he met with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to support drug courts, and that year opened Perry House, a men's sober-living facility in his former Malibu home, which operated from 2013 to 2015. He said he hoped to be remembered more for helping people achieve sobriety than for his acting career, a mission continued by the Matthew Perry Foundation, launched days after his death. Tributes reflected that impact: the main Friends cast issued a joint statement, and Max added an on-screen memorial card to the series. On August 19, 2025, Perry's Fools Rush In co-star Salma Hayek marked what would have been his 56th birthday with an Instagram tribute.

In May 2026, Heritage Auctions partnered with the Matthew Perry Foundation to sell his collection of art, Friends memorabilia, and accessories.

Perry, Matthew (November 1, 2022). Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir. Foreword: Lisa Kudrow. New York: Flatiron Books. ISBN 978-1-250-86644-8. OCLC 1338841699.