Perry was 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 role, Friends: The Reunion (2021). He voiced Benny in the video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
Matthew Langford Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on August 19, 1969.[1] His mother, Suzanne Marie Morrison (née Langford, born 1948),[2] 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.[3][4]
Perry's parents separated when he was one year old, and his mother married Canadian broadcast journalist Keith Morrison. He was raised by his mother mostly in Ottawa, Ontario, but he also lived briefly in Toronto and Montreal.[5] Perry attended Rockcliffe Park Public School and Ashbury College, a boarding school in Ottawa.[6][7] 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.[8]
By the time he was ten, Perry started misbehaving. He stole money, smoked, let his grades slip, and beat up fellow student and future Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.[7][9] Perry later attributed this to feeling like a family outsider who did not belong when his mother began having children with Morrison, writing "I was so often on the outside looking in, still that kid up in the clouds on a flight to somewhere else, unaccompanied".[8] At the age of 14, he began drinking alcohol and was drinking every day by the time he was 18.[10] Perry practiced tennis, often for 10 hours per day,[3] and became a top-ranked junior player in Canada with the possibility of a tennis career. However, at age 15, he moved from Ottawa to live with his father in Los Angeles, where competition was tougher.[3][9][11]
Perry was cast as a regular on the 1990 CBS sitcom Sydney, playing the younger brother of Valerie Bertinelli's character.[13] In 1991, he made a guest appearance on Beverly Hills, 90210 as Roger Azarian.[18] Perry played the starring role in the ABC sitcom Home Free, which aired in 1993.[19]
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,[20] 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.[21] 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.[22]
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.[24] He appeared as attorney Todd Merrick in two episodes of Ally McBeal.[26] 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.[27]
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.[36] The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office success.[37][38] 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.[39][40][41]
Perry's new comedy pilot, Mr. Sunshine, based on his original idea for the show, was bought by ABC.[44][45] He played the lead role as a middle-aged man with an identity crisis.[46] ABC canceled the series after nine episodes in 2011.[47]
Perry in 2012
In 2012, Perry starred in the NBC comedy series Go On, written and produced by former Friends writer/producer Scott Silveri. Perry portrayed Ryan King, a sportscaster who tries to move on after the death of his wife through the help of mandatory therapy sessions.[48] In the same year, he guest-starred on the CBS drama The Good Wife as attorney Mike Kresteva. He reprised his role in the fourth season in 2013.[49]
In 2014, Perry made his British TV debut in the one-off comedy program The Dog Thrower, which aired on May 1 as part of Sky Arts' Playhouse Presents. He portrayed "a charismatic man" who enchanted onlookers by throwing his dog in the air.[50] From 2015 to 2017, Perry starred in, co-wrote, and served as executive producer of a reboot of the sitcom The Odd Couple on CBS. He played Oscar Madison opposite Thomas Lennon as Felix Unger.[51]
Perry played the lead role in the world premiere production of his play The End of Longing, which opened on February 11, 2016, at the Playhouse Theatre in London.[52] Its limited run proved successful despite mixed reviews.[53] Perry restructured the play and appeared alongside Jennifer Morrison in its second off-Broadway production, which opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on June 5, 2017. It closed on July 1 after receiving poor reviews.[54] Years later Perry described the play as "a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk. I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me."[55]
Perry held Canadian and American citizenship. He dated Yasmine Bleeth in 1995, Julia Roberts from 1995 to 1996, and Lizzy Caplan from 2006 to 2012.[63][64] In November 2020, Perry became engaged to literary manager Molly Hurwitz. Their engagement ended in 2021.[65]
Perry had a perfectionist and obsessive personality, spending many hours perfecting his answering machine message.[3] He also believed in God, with whom he had "a very close relationship,"[73] calling himself "a seeker."[74]
Health and addiction
In his memoirs, Perry wrote that by age 14, he became an alcoholic.[75] 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.[76] His weight dropped to 128 pounds (58 kg) as he took as many as 55 Vicodin pills per day.[77][78] In May 2000, at the age of 30, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with alcohol-induced pancreatitis.[76][79]
While Perry said in 2002 that although he had made an effort not to drink on the set of Friends, he did arrive with extreme hangovers and sometimes would shake or sweat excessively on set.[3][75] During the later seasons of the series, he was frequently drunk or high on set. His castmates made efforts to help him, even staging an intervention,[75] but were unsuccessful.[3]
In February 2001, Perry paused productions of Friends and Serving Sara for two months[3] so that he could enter in-patient rehabilitation for his addictions to Vicodin, methadone, amphetamines, and alcohol.[80] He said later that due to his substance use disorder he had no memory of three years of his work on Friends.[81]
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. Upon being admitted to the hospital, doctors told his family that Perry had a 2% chance of survival. He was connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine.[77]
Two years later, while attending rehab in Switzerland, Perry faked pain to get a prescription for 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin 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 cardiopulmonary resuscitation (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, Perry spent another $175,000 to take a private jet back to Switzerland.[82] 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.[9][83]
On October 28, 2023, Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles and was pronounced dead at 4:17pm that day, at the age of 54.[88][89]
On November 3, 2023, Perry's funeral was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles where he was buried.[90] His five Friends co-stars attended, as did his father, mother and stepfather.[91] The Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song "Don't Give Up" was played at his funeral. Perry was enamored with the song, and referenced it in signed copies of his autobiography, released in part to help people suffering from depression or addiction issues. When promoting his memoir, he praised the ending of the track's music video as "so cool" for the hugging featured, and mentioned, "I always put 'Don't give up' there because you shouldn't give up."[92] Following Perry's death, the National Philanthropic Trust established the "Matthew Perry Foundation" to support people suffering from addiction.[93]
On December 15, 2023, Perry's death was revealed to have occurred due to "acute effects of ketamine".[94][95] Other circumstances that contributed to his death included the effects of buprenorphine, drowning, and coronary artery disease.[94] The LA County 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," while "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 at the time of his death, his last known session of which having been the week prior to his death. However, the report stated "the ketamine in his system at death could not be from that infusion therapy since ketamine's half-life is 3 to 4 hours, or less".[96][97][98]
^Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Friends episode: "The One Where Chandler Takes a Bath"
^Shared with Ben Winston, Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, David Crane, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Emma Conway, James Longman, Stacey Thomas, Brett Blakeney, David Piendak, Carly Segal, Guy Harding, Paul Monaghan, James Corden, Tracie Fiss, Mike Darnell, Brooke Karzen
^ abShared with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer
^Shared with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Jane Sibbett, John Christopher Allen
^Hayward, Anthony (October 29, 2023). "Matthew Perry obituary". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 14, 2023. Retrieved November 16, 2023.
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