Obituary of Matthew Perry: Friends brought recognition, but they were unable to drive out inner demons

 Obituary of Matthew Perry: Friends brought recognition, but they were unable to drive out inner demons

While starring in the largest TV program, Matthew Perry was making millions of people laugh, he was also fighting demons from a traumatic background and trapped in a torturous cycle of addiction.

Following his relocation to Los Angeles in 1986, Matthew Perry believed that his rise to stardom would solve all of his issues.

In his open memoir published last year, he said, "I yearned for it more than anybody else on the face of the planet."

"I required it." There was nothing else that could make me better. I knew for sure."

In the end, Perry would fulfill his desire and join the six main performers of the comedy that has garnered the greatest affection over the last thirty years.

Fame as the witty Chandler Bing on Friends also came wealth, with each episode earning $1.1 million, along with a succession of beautiful women.

Behind the scenes, however, Perry's battles to maintain control over his personal life and health looked to be becoming worse.

Matthew Perry, star of Friends, passes away aged 54

Chandler and Matthew Perry are a comic combination made in heaven.

Pictures from Matthew Perry's life

Perry linked his comedy skills and anxieties to a childhood spent divided between his separated parents, but also feeling abandoned by both, as he revealed in his autobiography.

His mother was a former Canadian beauty queen who became a journalist and worked as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's press secretary. His father was an American actor who appeared in Old Spice aftershave commercials.

Although Perry was raised mostly in Ottawa, Canada, he claimed to be a "latchkey kid" due to his mother's work, which "just meant I spent an abundance of time alone".

"Accordingly I learned to be entertaining - pratfalls, quick one liners, you know the drill - due to my had to be," he said.

Tennis phenom

His mother worked in a difficult environment, "and me being funny tended to calm her to the ground enough so that she would cook something to eat, sit down at the dinner table with me and hear them out - after I heard her out of course" .

Regarding his dad, "I saw his entire face more often on TV or in magazines than I did in reality" . However, he wrote, he was "my hero".

At the age of ten, Perry began acting inappropriately. He stole money, smoked, let his grades to plummet, and even beat up Justin, the PM of Canada and a classmate of Trudeau's.

He said that he was secretly resolved to keep everyone away from his sentiments of abandonment when he took his first drink at the age of 13.

Having been a rated young player in Canada, he seemed to be headed for a tennis career when he went to Los Angeles at the age of 15 to live with his father.

But he discovered that the competition was more fierce in California, so he turned his focus to acting. He appeared in the sitcoms Charles in Charge and Growing Pains in the 1980s, then went on to play the lead in Sydney in 1990 and Home Free in 1993.

Perry recognized himself in the screenplay for a brand-new comedy named Friends Like Us as soon as it was presented.

"When I read the script for Friendship Like Us, it was as if someone had followed me everywhere for a year, stealing my jokes, copying my behaviors photocopying my world-weary yet amusing view of life," said the actor.

"I was particularly struck by one character. Not that I believed I could pull off a Chandler role. I went by Chandler.

The only minor hitch was that he was previously booked to star in a "sci-fi comedy" set in the year 2194, which was about luggage handlers at Los Angeles airport.

However, it proved to be a disastrous idea and was eventually canceled, as was the actor first selected to portray Chandler in the other program, which is now called merely Friends.

Perry was therefore chosen as the last and youngest main actor.

He knew from away that it would be a success. He said, "I knew right then and there just how enormous it was all going to be" when he first saw creator Marta Kauffman.

He was accurate. His long-desired stardom finally materialized as the program became a smash. However, it didn't make his issues go away.

Aniston went up to him.

He warned it may hurt to make the performances. "I could occasionally say a line and they wouldn't laugh, and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. It's definitely not healthy. I felt like I was going to die if that happened."

"I would go crazy if I didn't get the chuckle I was meant to. That's how I felt every single night. I was in a poor position because of this pressure."

He started to drink more, thinking vodka would make up for what fame had failed to provide.

It got to the point that Jennifer Aniston confronted him. He stated: "'We can smell it,' she stated that in a kind of weird but loving way, because the plural 'we' hit me like a sledgehammer."

However, Perry said that his co-stars came together to stand by him and that he was given a sober buddy at work to assist with his recuperation.

He was in and out of treatment, however, and his efforts at rehabilitation were rocky. After a jet-ski accident in 1997, he developed a Vicodin addiction. Amphetamines, methadone, and alcohol were all issues, and he was hospitalized in 2000 for pancreatitis.

He once claimed on BBC Radio 2 that he couldn't recall shooting Friends for three years. "I was a little out of it at the time somewhere during the year three and six."

He said in his book that he had been mostly clean since 2001, "save for about 60 or 70 mishaps," after several efforts at therapy.

Three years later, Friends reached its last episode, and the whole cast, crew, and audience broke down in tears. Perry said he had no feelings. "I couldn't tell if that was because of the opioid I was collection, or if I was just generally dead inside."

It was difficult for every member of the cast to repeat that success after such a huge smash.

Perry had notable parts in The West Wing and Ally McBeal in addition to his iconic performance as a TV executive producer in Aaron Sorkin's Apartment 60 on the Sunset Strip.

There were fewer sitcoms at first. He portrayed a sports stadium manager in Mr. Sunshine, a sports talk radio broadcaster in Go On, and a slovenly roommate in The Odd Couple.

Alongside his pal Bruce Willis, he starred in the criminal comedy The Whole Nine Yards and its follow-up, The Whole Ten Yards, as well as the romantic comedy Fools Rush In starring Salma Hayek. He also portrayed the older Zac Efron in the movie 17 Again.

The Times said that his play, The End of Longing, "explores his characters' longing for commitment and affection and the damage that can be wreaked when those things continue to be lacking from life." He also created this play in 2016.

Perry shied away from commitment and never experienced true love.

"I don't trust love, but I need it."

He was "crushing badly" on Aniston at initially on Friends, but those emotions quickly vanished due to "her deafening lack of interest".

Following Julia Roberts's co-starring role on the program, he went out with her. Perry, however, acknowledged that his fears were there and that he was always afraid she would leave him.

"Why wouldn't she? I was damaged, twisted, and unloveable; I was not enough and I could never be enough. Thus, I ended my relationship with the beautiful and intelligent Julia Roberts rather than going through the unavoidable pain of losing her."

Other relationships included those with actresses Lizzy Caplan and Yasmine Bleeth, talent manager Molly Hurwitz, and half-sister Tricia of Carrie Fisher.

However, he said that he had trouble opening out to others. "I don't trust love, but I need it." I know you may notice me if I come off like Chandler and show you who I really am, but even worse, you could notice me and decide to break up with me, and that's something I can't have."

Week-long coma

In the meanwhile, his health issues escalated to a critical level in 2018.

He was given a 2% chance of survival when his colon "exploded" as a result of opiate usage, necessitating a seven-hour operation. He did, but he was unconscious for the next two weeks.

Later on, he wrote, "I had essentially killed myself." "I had never been a partier - taking every person drugs, and it was a lot of drugs, was just an unsuccessful attempt to feel better."

He wrote in his biography about how he had attended 6,000 meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, spent $7 million overall attempting to become clean, had 15 stints in treatment, and had twice-weekly therapy sessions for thirty years.

Although he paid a heavy price for those ingrained fears that weren't addressed by enormous celebrity, he also utilized his own experiences to promote treatment for addicts.

In 2012, he converted his $10 million Malibu beach home into Perry House, a sober living facility for men. The following year, the White House awarded the initiative a project award.

Two years later, he sold it, but he insisted that helping addicts in recovery remained his first priority.

In addition to the influence he made with his acting abilities, that work is now receiving recognition after his passing.

And Friends viewers will always remember him with affection for that, since he proudly displayed his inherent comedic talent along with his imperfections.