Matthew Perry

Matthew Perry is a well known actor in the television world. He is most famous for his quirky and smart aleck character Chandler on the hugely successful sitcom, “Friends”. He is also famous for his voice over work as Benny in the popular video game franchise known as “Fallout”.

Background

Matthew Perry was born on August 19, 1969 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Matthew was the only child of his parents, John Bennette Perry and Suzzane Marie Morrison. His parents got separated when he was just a year old. He was raised in Ottawa by his mother who had to find employment as a single parent.

While growing up, he was very fascinated with the sport of tennis and he became a top ranked junior level player in Canada. He moved to the city of Los Angeles at the age of 15. He started his attempts in acting while he was still in high school. He finished his high school graduation from the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks.

Acting Career

Perry started his acting career while he was in high school because he caught the itch for the art. He performed a supporting role in “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon”. “Second Chance” was the first TV show he appeared in. After that, he appeared in a few TV shows and films. He was successful in getting the main role in a sitcom called “Home Free”.

In 1994, Perry managed to get a part in one of the most popular TV series of all time called “Friends”. Chandler Bing is a humorous and sarcastic role that fit Matthew perfectly. The TV series was about a group of young men and women living in New York City. The cast of “Friends” became good friends in real life and negotiated contracts together. The show was a huge success and his role was nominated for outstanding lead role in comedy series. He received a huge salary of $750,000 per episode. He fought his addictions while working on the show.

Along with Friends, he appeared in few comedy films as well in that period. In 2006, Matthew took up another TV series named “The Ron Clark Story”. He worked as a screenwriter in movie called “Numb”. “The End of Steve” was a talk show which he created with Peter Tolan and he was also the host. In 2009, he did another comedy film called “17 Again” with Zac Efron.

In 2010, he gave his voice to a well known video game character named Benny in Fallout. Over the years, he has received many awards for his outstanding and humorous roles he played over the years. In 2016, he received the People’s Choice Award for favorite comedian TV actor.

From the Screen to the Stage

Matthew Perry has had an enormous amount of success in his television career. Even though the popular sitcom, “Friends” remains the highlight of his career, he was still doing some TV work after the show wrapped up. He was the star of the “The Odd Couple” which aired on CBS for three seasons. When the show was cancelled, Matthew decided to take his talents to Broadway.

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He wrote a play called “The End of Longing” and had a debut for the show in London. The audience loved it but the critics hated. It was produced by MCC Theater and Matthew decided to rewrite the script to make the critics happy. When asked why he decided to write a play after a long career on television, Matthew said, “I’ve written for television a lot over the last 10 years, but I always wrote with a partner. I was scared to write something alone, because I knew that I was good with dialogue but I was worried about structure and story.”

Matthew had to overcome his fears and take the challenge on himself. He couldn’t rely on a partner or someone else if he was going to find his true creative self. He wanted to be a true artist that could stand on his own, “But then one summer, a couple years ago, I was bored and I decided I was gonna face the page on my own. So I sat there on my computer, I had no idea what I was gonna write, and a series of monologues came out of my head.”

He fell in love with the process and could not put away what he was working on, “It is a very theater kind of device, so I realized that I was writing a play. I just kept going until I finished. It flew out of me, this play. I finished it in about 10 days. I guess I had something to say.”

The story was very close to Matthew, “It’s personal, but it’s an exaggerated form of me. Jack, the character I play, is a much different drunk than I was. What the play aims to do is tell a couple of messages.”

He felt that the best way to fight his demons of addiction was to write about it, “The main message is that there’s a popular notion out there that people don’t change, but I don’t believe that’s true. All of the characters in this play change and become better. That’s a big message. And also, I try to use humor as a device to tell a story about addiction and how difficult it is to overcome.”

Personal Life

Matthew has a part of his finger missing due to a terrible accident but it did not hamper him for the rest of his life. Matthew had many relationships over the years but has not got married. He got addicted to Vicodin and went to rehab for treatment. He now supports rehab movements and received the Champion of Recovery award in 2013.

The accomplished and famous actor has a net worth of $70 Million dollars. His fellow cast members have also enjoyed their profits from being on the show. Matthew is very active on Instagram, he has over a hundred thousand followers that want to stay updated on his life.

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