Farewell to Matthew Perry, the actor who won the hearts of millions in the role of Chandler in ‘Friends’: The star died at age 54, apparently drowning in a hot tub. The news was reported by the gossip site TMZ and the LA Times. Curious that his last post on Instagram was in a bathtub.
The actor was found in his home in Los Angeles by rescuers called for a heart attack. No drugs or traces of an erotic game gone wrong were found on the spot. Matthew Perry was famous throughout the world for his role in the hit 90s sitcom, which aired for 10 seasons and in which he took part in all 234 episodes.
Affable, optimistic and ready to joke on screen, Matthew had recently opened up about his personal difficulties, in particular his addiction to drugs and alcohol: a memoir of heartbreaking beauty (“Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing”) in which he had shared shocking details about his life and past problems.
The son of separated parents (his father had abandoned his mother when he was a child), he learned early to use humor to get his mother’s attention. At 14, his first encounter with alcohol and realizing that it “had a completely different effect” on him compared to his friends. while they had vomited, he “lying on the grass” had felt a sensation of well-being: “Nothing bothered me.” From that moment on, he started drinking and never stopped.
When he got the role of Chandler Bing, he was already an alcoholic. Even though Perry tried to hide his condition, his castmates (Jennifer Aniston, in particular) had been “understanding and patient.” «We are like penguins: when one is sick or injured, the others surround him and support him, they walk around him until the penguin can walk on his own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.” So Perry had alternated rehabilitation and recovery for years. The only season in which he had been sober the entire time was the ninth; «And guess which one I was nominated for best actor in? Maybe he should have told me something.”
Matthew Perry’s addiction to alcohol had worsened in 1997 after an accident on a jet ski: due to some very painful injuries, he began to use an opioid painkiller, Vicodin, and at times he even took up to 55 tablets per day. In 2018, when he was 49 years old, the actor suffered a gastrointestinal perforation caused by the extreme use of opioids. “After two weeks in a coma, my family was told that I only had a two percent chance of surviving.” He made it, but while he recovered and the colon healed, the actor had to use a colostomy bag and in that long period, almost a year, he woke up covered in his own feces “50 to 60” times .
In recent months, when he appeared disheveled and overweight in public, he had raised fears that he had fallen back into old habits. Earlier in the week, he was spotted at a Los Angeles restaurant, The Apple Pan, out for lunch with a friend, disheveled and looking dejected. Curious that the latest post on Instagram shows him immersed in a hydromassage tub: he relaxes at night, wearing headphones for music, while he looks at the city. A caption next to it. “Oh, so swirling hot water makes you feel good? I am Mattman”: a reference that followers immediately linked to his desire to play Batman, the fictional superhero.