Hollywood star George Clooney says Matthew Perry had a difficult time finding happiness despite landing a major role on the popular sitcom Friends.
Perry, who portrayed Chandler Bing on the show, passed away at the age of 54 on October 30 after being discovered unresponsive at his home in Pacific Palisades.
An autopsy report revealed that Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine”. The actor had struggled with addiction for many years, a topic he discussed in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Clooney, 62, shared that he had known Perry since he was a teenager. “I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid,” the actor told Deadline in an interview.
Clooney added that Perry had always wanted to be on a sitcom and even expressed his desire to the actor. “He would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth’. And he got on probably one of the best ever. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace,” Clooney said.
Perry and Clooney both rose to stardom in the early 1990s, with Clooney filming ER and Perry shooting Friends at the same Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.
Clooney mentioned the difficulty of watching Perry struggle with addiction while they were working on the same lot. “Watching that go on on the lot— we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other— it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him. We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff,” Clooney shared.
Clooney also emphasized that success and money do not guarantee happiness, stating, “it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.” Clooney is currently promoting his upcoming directorial The Boys in the Boat.