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By RICHARD WINTON | Los Angeles Times
“Friends” star Matthew Perry was found dead Saturday in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources said.
Authorities responded about 4 p.m. to his home, where he was discovered unresponsive. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, did not cite a cause of death. There was no sign of foul play, the sources added.
Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide detectives are investigating the death.
Perry, the son of actor John Bennett Perry and Suzanne Marie Langford, onetime press secretary of Canadian Prime Minister Piere Trudeau, was born in 1969 and grew up between Montreal and Los Angeles after his parents separated when Perry was 1.
He got his start as a child actor, landing guest spots “Charles in Charge” and “Beverly Hills 90210” and playing opposite River Phoenix in the film “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon” in the 1980s and early 1990s. But his big break came when he was cast in “Friends” — originally titled “Friends Like Us” — a sitcom about six single New Yorkers navigating adulthood that premiered on NBC in 1994. It soon became a juggernaut, the anchor of the network’s vaunted Thursday-night “Must-See TV” lineup, and turned Perry and his cast mates, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt Leblanc and Matthew Schwimmer into mega-stars almost overnight.
There was a dark side to instant fame, however. In his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry reflected on his lifelong struggle with addiction to alcohol and opioids, which had led to multiple stints in rehab and serious health issues, including a 2018 gastrointestinal surgery that left him hospitalized for five months.
“Nobody wanted to be famous more than me,” Perry told The Times in April, discussing “Big Terrible Thing” at the Festival of Books. “I was convinced it was the answer. I was 25, it was the second year of ‘Friends,’ and eight months into it, I realized the American dream is not making me happy, not filling the holes in my life. I couldn’t get enough attention. … Fame does not do what you think it’s going to do. It was all a trick.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Editor’s note: This story is developing and will be updated with new information as it becomes available.
