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‘Friends’ Alum Matthew Perry Dead at 54 After Apparent Drowning at Los Angeles Home: Report
Friends alum Matthew Perry is reportedly dead at the age of 54 following an apparent drowning at his home on Saturday, October 28. First responders were called for a report of a cardiac arrest, TMZ reports. Law enforcement sources told the outlet he was found in his hot tub.
In Touch has reached out to Perry’s representatives.
In Perry’s final Instagram post on October 23, he was seen sitting in his jacuzzi at night, writing in the caption, “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good? I’m Mattman.”
The actor was best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the hit NBC sitcom, which aired from 1994 through 2004.
Sources told TMZ no drugs were found at the scene, and Perry had been open about his struggles with addiction for years.
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote that alcohol addiction was just starting to surface when he was cast on the hit NBC sitcom at age 24. “I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” he wrote. “But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.’”
At one point during the show’s production, he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and weighed only 128 lbs. “I didn’t know how to stop,” he recalled. “If the police came over to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’re going to take you to jail,’ I’d start packing. I couldn’t stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older.”
Perry shared how his costars were “understanding” and “patient,” about his issues, adding, “It’s like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.”
The Odd Couple alum never married or had children. He became engaged to Molly Hurwitz, a literary manager, in November 2020, but the pair split in June 2021.
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