Zac Efron said he would be “honoured” to play Matthew Perry in a biopic as he paid tribute to the Friends star for the first time following his death last month.
The two actors starred together in the 2009 teen fantasy comedy 17 Again, in which Efron played Perry’s younger self.Last year, Perry said in an interview that he had asked Efron to play the lead role in a film that he had written and planned to direct, but that Efron had “said no”.
Talk of this project came up again following Perry's death, when a friend told People magazine that the film was in fact a biopic and that he “wanted Zac Efron, who’s played him already to play him again because he said he did such a good job”.
Promoting his new film The Iron Claw, Efron told People: “I’m honoured to hear he was thinking of me to play him ... I’d be honoured to do it.”
He continued: “[Perry] was a mentor to me, and we made a really cool film together. I looked up to him, I learned comedic timing from that guy. I mean, when we were filming 17 Again, it was so surreal for me to look across and have him be there, because I’ve learned so much from him, from his whole life.”
Perry, who spoke openly of his battles with drug and alcohol addiction, died on October 28 in an apparent drowning in the outside hot tub of his Los Angeles home.
An exact cause of death has yet to be determined and is pending the results of a toxicology report.
He was laid to rest in a private funeral last weekend attended only by close friends and family, including his Friends co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer.
