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Actor most associated with the role of Chandler Bing in the long-running sitcom said to have drowned at his Los Angeles home
Published : 29 Oct 2023, 07:35 AM
Matthew Perry, best known for playing Chandler Bing in the hit TV sitcom Friends, has died at 54, reports The Guardian.
Perry drowned at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, sources including a representative for the actor and law enforcement told NBC News. Other US outlets also reported Perry had died.
Authorities responded about 4 pm 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, Los Angeles Times reports. There was no sign of foul play, the sources added.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide detectives are investigating the death. The cause of death will be determined at a later date by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.
After small roles in Growing Pains, Beverly Hills 90210 and Dream On, Perry scored a role in NBC sitcom Friends in 1994. The comedy, about six friends living in New York City, quickly became a phenomenon, winning multiple Emmys and scoring record ratings.
Perry went on to play the sarcastic and neurotic Chandler in 10 seasons with the 2004 finale reaching over 52 million viewers in the US, making it the most-watched TV episode of the 2000s.
“People come up to me every day and say, ‘Hey Chandler!’ I don’t respond to it,” he said in a 2014 interview. “If somebody says, ‘Hi Matthew, I love your work’, that’s one thing. But if somebody goes ‘Yo, Chandler’, I don’t like that. I’m tired of it. I’m not Chandler.”
Perry, the son of actor John Bennett Perry and Suzanne Marie Langford, onetime press secretary of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was born in 1969 and grew up between Montreal and Los Angeles after his parents separated when Perry was 1.
In his bestselling 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry recalled acting up after his father abandoned his family to chase his own dreams of becoming an actor – including bullying a young Justin Trudeau. “I decided to end my argument with him when he was put in charge of an entire army,” he wrote.
At 15 Perry moved to Hollywood, with the hope of reconnecting with his father. It was there he began to enjoy acting, and was eventually spotted at a diner, “charming a bunch of young women”, by director William Richert, who left a note asking him to be in his next movie, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, alongside River Phoenix.
Perry was 24 when he started playing Chandler and was relatively unknown, just like his co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. In a 2019 interview, Friends creator David Crane said Chandler was the most difficult character to cast; actors Craig Bierko, Jon Cryer and Jon Favreau were also considered for the role.
“Marta [Kauffman, co-creator] and I were thinking Chandler is just poorly written,” added Crane. “Then Matthew came in and you went, ‘Oh, well, there you go. Done. Done. That’s the guy.’”
Perry was nominated for an Emmy award five times, including once for his Friends role and twice for his role as lawyer Joe Quincy on The West Wing.
During his tenure on Friends, Perry starred in films including Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek, Three to Tango with Neve Campbell and The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis. He also played small roles in Ally McBeal and Scrubs.
