Matthew Perry, ‘Friends’ star, dead at age of 54, per report

Matthew Perry, ‘Friends’ star, dead at age of 54, per report

Matthew Perry is dead at the age of 54, TMZ is reporting.

TMZ, citing law enforcement sources, reports the “Friends” actor was found Saturday at an L.A.-area home of an apparent drowning. First responders reacted to a cardiac arrest call, and Perry was found in a jacuzzi. No drugs were found at the scene, nor is foul play expected.

Perry is best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the hit ‘90s sitcom “Friends,” which ran for 10 seasons.

The actor had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, which he opened up about in a memoir he published last year. The star revealed he almost died in 2018 after a gastrointestinal perforation, spending months in the hospital.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” Perry stated at the time.

The actor moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. Early roles included as Chazz Russell on “Boys Will Be Boys” from 1987 to 1988. Appearances on “Growing Pains” and “Sydney” followed, but his big break came in 1994 with NBC’s iconic sitcom “Friends.”

“I was 24 when I got on the show,” he said in the 2004 book “Friends … ‘Til the End,” per PEOPLE. “I’ll be 34 when it’s over, and those are really important years in somebody’s life. So to do it all in public … was difficult. At first you have the wave of ‘I’m famous, and this is exactly what I’ve wanted my whole life.’ But then you go through the whole recluse stage where you think, ‘I wish everybody would stop staring at me.’ And then you eventually, hopefully, get through all that. You find things in your life that are grounding, like your family and good friends.”

Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, was a journalist and press secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, while his stepfather is Dateline’s Keith Morrison. His father, John Bennett Perry, was an actor and model.

Perry had said that he was pulling Keanu Reeves’ name from future editions of his memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” because of an insult in early edition.

“I said a stupid thing,” Perry said, per The Los Angeles Times. “It was a mean thing to do.

Perry was talking about a reference to the deaths of former co-stars River Phoenix and Chris Farley while Reeves “walks among us.”

Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.