The American-Canadian actor Matthew Perry, identified for his efficiency as Chandler Bing on Associates from 1994 till 2004, has died from an obvious drowning at his house in Los Angeles, in accordance with reports. Perry was 54.
Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to an American actor father and Canadian journalist mom, Perry spent his early years in Ottawa following his dad and mom’ divorce when he was nonetheless in infancy, earlier than transferring to LA at 15 to pursue a profession in present enterprise. Upon graduating highschool, Perry booked a string of supporting roles on tv and in films earlier than being forged as an everyday on the 1990 CBS sitcom Sydney, starring Valerie Bertinelli. He would go on to make appearances on 90210 and the short-lived Residence Free earlier than auditioning for Associates. (Perry had beforehand labored with creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane on the HBO sitcom Dream On.)
For the following 10 years and 10 seasons, Perry—the youngest individual in Associates’s foremost forged (he was newly 25 when the primary episode aired)—would play the dryly humorous Chandler Bing reverse Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Inexperienced, David Schwimmer’s Ross Geller, Courtney Cox’s Monica Geller, Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay, and Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani. The present’s large success was, for Perry, a dream come true: As he recalled in his 2022 memoir Associates, Lovers, and the Massive Horrible Factor, shortly earlier than touchdown his half on Associates, Perry prayed: “God, you are able to do no matter you wish to me. Simply please make me well-known.”
Certainly, Associates did make him well-known, and rich—by 2002, he and his forged mates had been making upwards of $1 million every, per episode—however these years had been additionally coloured by well being points, and Perry’s struggles with each alcoholism and opioid abuse. In his ebook, the actor recollects detoxing greater than 65 occasions, and spending “$9 million or one thing making an attempt to get sober” over his lifetime. (By final fall, he had been clear for about 18 months.) “It’s a hideous illness, and he has a troublesome model of it. What’s not altering is his will to maintain going, maintain preventing and maintain dwelling,” Kudrow informed the New York Occasions final yr.
The information of Perry’s dying on Saturday got here as a shock to his legions of mates and followers, each in Hollywood and world wide, who flooded social media with their reactions and condolences. Learn some beneath.
