After his decade-long run on Friends, Matthew Perryfirmly cemented himself as an A-list actor, known by millions around the world.
His work on the show, over 273 episodes and 10 years, reportedly earned Perry $US90 million (approx $142 million). He received Emmy nominations, roles in Hollywood films, and became a beloved household name.
But less than 10 years before being cast on the iconic sitcom, Perry was living in Canada with zero idea of what he wanted to do.
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Perry was born in the US, but raised in Canada, where he lived until he was 15. In 1985, he uprooted his life and moved to Los Angeles to live with his dad.
There, he went to a local high school, enrolled in improv comedy classes, and began to get cast in small roles on TV shows.
Though he had a few inconsequential guest spots, and a supporting role on the little-known series Boys Will be Boys, Perry’s big break came in 1986 when he was cast in a feature film.
He was cast in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon after the movie’s director spotted the young actor chatting up girls in a diner, and realised he’d be perfect in the film.
Also starring River Phoenix, the movie was filmed in Chicago, and Perry later revealed it was one of the biggest career highs of his life.
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“I had never been so excited in my life,” Perry wrote in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, his 2022 memoir.
“It was in Chicago, and on this movie, and with River Phoenix, that I fell deeply in love with acting — and the cherry on top of this deeply magical time was that River and I became firm friends. He and I drank beer and shot pool.”
The movie ultimately flopped, and Phoenix died five years later, which was a huge blow for a young Perry. Though he still looks back on the time with fondness.
“When it came to the last day of shooting,” he wrote, “I sobbed and sobbed because I knew even then I would never again have an experience like that – my first movie, far from home, free to flirt and drink and hang out with a brilliant young man like River Phoenix.”
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Matthew Perry’s life and career in pictures
Though the film was a huge personal achevement for Perry, it didn’t do much to move the needle in terms of his career. For the next five years, he stayed in Los Angeles, battling it out in auditions, occasionally landing a guest role or a spot in a pilot.
But then, in 1994, fate stepped in.
Perry heard about a new show titled Six of One, which he desperately wanted to audition for. He wasn’t initially offered a chance to try out, as he was already tied to another TV movie project.
Perry later told Seth Meyers he had filmed a pilot for a show called LAX 2194, about a baggage handler in the year 2194 who looks after aliens’ luggage. Thankfully, the show didn’t get picked up, and Perry landed an audition for the show he coveted.
The casting directors knew Perry would be perfect for the role of Chandler. They shot the pilot episode, renamed the show to Friends, and the rest is history.
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Friends was as close as you could get to an overnight success in the 1990s, before the internet and social media are as ubiquitous as they are now.
At the time, Perry desperately craved the fame which came along with the success of Friends.
As he recalled in his 2022 memoir, shortly before landing his part on Friends, Perry prayed: “God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.”
He also later told The New York Times in 2002: “There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant.”
By 2001, Perry was earning one million dollars per episode, and nabbed an Emmy nomination for his acting.
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In the Friends reunion, which was filmed in 2021, Perry revealed the most important thing to come out of filming the show was the friendships he made with his co-stars.
“The best way I can describe it is, after the show was over, if we were at a party and one of us bumped into each other, that was it. That was the end of the night,” he said on the show, talking to his co-stars.
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“You just sat with the person all night long. You apologised to the people you were with but they had to understand you had met somebody special to you and you were going to talk to that person for the rest of the night.”
After the news of Perry’s death broke a clip of this moment from the reunion has gone viral on social media.
