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 appearance, 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, as well as a younger paternal half-sister. 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 the age of 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]
1994–2004: Breakthrough with Friends
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 the age of 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]
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]
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. He 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 father, mother, and stepfather attended, as did his five Friends co-stars.[91] The
Peter Gabriel and
Kate Bush song "
Don't Give Up" was played; 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.[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
Los Angeles County Department of 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][99]
In May 2024, an investigation was opened by the Los Angeles Police Department to determine how Perry obtained the high dose of ketamine that caused his death.[100]
^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.