Matthew Perry Dead at 54
The acting world has lost a TV comedy legend.
Matthew Perry died of an apparent drowning at his Los Angeles home Oct. 28, his rep and a law enforcement source told NBC News. He was 54.
A 911 call came in that afternoon and was treated as a water rescue, the source said, adding that there was no apparent foul play.
Authorities found the Friends alum unresponsive in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times.
Six days before his death, Perry shared a photo of himself sitting in a hot tub on Instagram. It was his final post.
The actor was born in Massachusetts and raised in Canada. At age 15, he moved from Ottawa to Los Angeles to finish high school and pursue an acting career.
After taking on a few small parts on TV for several years, his big break came in 1987, when he played a leading role in the sitcom Boys Will Be Boys. The series lasted one season, after which Perry landed a recurring role on Growing Pains.
In 1994, Perry began playing his breakout role of Chandler Bing on Friends, starring alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer. The NBC sitcom lasted 10 seasons and earned Perry his first Emmy nomination in 2002. He went on to receive three more individual nods over the years—two for a guest role on The West Wing and one for his performance in the TNT movie The Ron Clark Story.
Perry is also known for his roles on the TV comedies Sunset 60 on the Sunset Strip, Go On and a remake of The Odd Couple, as well as the movies The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards.
Throughout his life, the actor battled alcohol and drug addiction. He detailed his struggles in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, released November 2022, noting he had spent over $7 million trying to get sober—and succeeded.
Also in his book, Perry recalled undergoing a near-death experience in 2018. He said that while saying in a sober living home, his colon "exploded" from years of opioid overuse and that he ended up spending two weeks in a coma and five months in a hospital. He underwent more than a dozen surgeries. He said his loved ones were told, "Matthew has a two percent chance of making it through the night," writing, "I will have to live out the rest of my days knowing that my mother and others heard those words."
after its release, Perry's memoir ranked No. 1 on the New York Times' bestsellers list. "People have just loved it," the actor later told E! News during the GQ Men of the Year event. "I shied away from nothing and I told the truth and the biggest thing was, the goal was, to help people and I know of a lot of people already who have been helped by it."
(E! News and NBC News are part of the NBCUniversal family.)
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