The actor Matthew Perry, who has been found dead at his home aged 54, brought a wry sense of humour to the role of Chandler Bing in Friends, the American sitcom featuring six twentysomethings in Manhattan facing the ups and down of everyday life.
“Chandler’s a guy who’s just not comfortable in his own skin – he’s got a great excuse to be funny,” said Perry of the sarcastic, neurotic character in the programme that ran from 1994 to 2004. “He’s an exaggerated form of me.”
The neurosis partly came from Chandler experiencing the divorce of his parents when he was nine and using humour as a defence mechanism. It echoed Perry’s own life, with his mother and father splitting up by his first birthday.
Through his work in “statistical analysis and data reconfiguration”, the character pulled in more money than the other friends – Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Monica (Courteney Cox), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), Ross (David Schwimmer) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) – although he hated his job.
Chandler had already met Monica Geller at college before they became neighbours in Greenwich Village, where he shared an apartment with Joey. By the end of the fourth series, the relationship had gone from being close friends to lovers and, three years later, they were husband and wife. Unable to have children of their own, they adopted twins, with their birth as a central storyline, alongside Ross and Rachel reuniting, in Friends’ final episode, which attracted more than 50 million viewers in the US.
By then, the programme’s impact on popular culture had spread well beyond its homeland. Joey’s “How you doin’?” and Chandler’s “Could I be any more …” broke into the language of its young audience. The part earned Perry worldwide fame that continues with Netflix bringing the sitcom to a new generation.
Nevertheless, stardom did nothing to help the actor to overcome his own vulnerabilities. In 1997, Aniston said: “His feelings get hurt. He cares what people think. He even bruises easily.”
Perry’s battles with his personal demons first hit the headlines halfway through the sitcom’s run. In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry recalled a journey to alcoholism that went from beer and wine at 14 to drinking vodka by the quart, as well as getting addicted to prescription drugs.
In 1997, he checked into a Minnesota rehab clinic for 28 days when he became hooked on a painkiller and appetite suppressant after a jet-ski accident and a 35lb weight loss. Three years later, he was hospitalised with pancreatitis. In 2001, he abruptly left the set of the film Serving Sara (released the following year) to go into rehab again.
Perry reflected that by 2018, at the age of 49, he had spent more than half his life in treatment centres. That year he suffered pneumonia and an exploded colon caused by opiod overuse, resulting in time on life support and two weeks in a coma.
He converted his Malibu home into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, Perry House, in 2013, but closed it two years later, citing expensive running costs. He had been drug and alcohol-free for 18 months before the screening in 2021 of Friends: The Reunion, a one-off special bringing back together the programme’s six stars.
Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Matthew was the son of Suzanne (nee Langford, later Morrison), a Canadian journalist, and John Bennett Perry, an American actor. He grew up mainly in Ottawa when his mother returned to her home country and eventually became press secretary to the then prime minister, Pierre Trudeau. In 2017, Perry revealed that he and another pupil at Rockcliffe Park elementary school had beaten up Justin Trudeau, Pierre’s son and current Canadian prime minister. Trudeau responded on Twitter (now X): “I’ve been giving it some thought, and you know what, who hasn’t wanted to punch Chandler? How about a rematch @MatthewPerry?”
While studying at Ashbury college, Perry became a top-ranking junior tennis player. He practised up to 10 hours a day, but switched that determination to acting after travelling to Los Angeles when he was 15 and being reunited with his father. “I wanted to be famous so badly,” he told the New York Times in 2002. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant.”
He made an impression with leading roles in sitcoms: Chazz Russell in Second Chance (1987), retitled Boys Will Be Boys for its second series in 1988, Billy Kells in Sydney (1990) and Matt Bailey in Home Free (1993) before Friends came along.
Perry’s big-screen debut came as River Phoenix’s best friend in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), but he never became the film star he hoped to be despite appearances in Fools Rush In (1997), Three to Tango (1999), The Whole Nine Yards (2000) and its sequel, The Whole Ten Yards (2003), both alongside Bruce Willis.
He stuck with television. Switching to drama, he had a short run as Joe Quincy, a Republican lawyer, in The West Wing in 2003, and starred in another Aaron Sorkin series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006-07). His own sitcom idea, Mr Sunshine, with him playing Ben Donovan, a San Diego arena operations manager, was dropped after a short run in 2011. The following year he starred as Ryan King, a sportscaster, in Go On and later played Oscar Madison in a revival of The Odd Couple (2015-17). He also wrote and starred in the play The End of Longing, which debuted in London’s West End in 2016.
He had relationships with many high-profile actors including Julia Roberts, Minnie Driver and Lizzy Caplan. From 2020 to 2021, he was engaged to Molly Hurwitz, a talent manager.
His parents survive him.
• Matthew Langford Perry, actor, born 19 August 1969; died 28 October 2023
