Matthew Perry Biography

Although Matthew Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he was raised in Ottawa where his Canadian mother was a press agent for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. When he was 12, his mother married Canadian news anchor Keith Morrison, who was hired to become a correspondant in 1986 for NBS in Los Angeles. Joking about the land of ice and snow where he was brought up, Matthew says, "I started playing hockey when I was four years old because that's the law in Canada."

After moving to Los Angeles, Matthew make guest appearances on a number of television series, including Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons, Highway to Heaven, Growing Pains, Empty Nest, Who's the Boss, Beverly Hills 90210, but he just wasn't getting the breakthrough he needed until the script for a TV pilot called Friends landed in his lap. "I desperately — desperately — needed the money," Matthew says about that time in 1994 when he was broke and out of work. "The part of Chandler leapt off the page, shook my hand, and said, 'This is you, man!'"

And him it was. Matthew was cast in the role of Chandler Bing and the show, of course, went on to become a huge hit, paving the way for Matthew's feature film career, although that career hasn't been too solid to date. His first film role of any substance was Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek. About that movie he recalled: "I come from a history of doing failed TV shows. Fools Rush In was the first movie I'd been offered, they paid me a lot of money, and suddenly I'm in Las Vegas pretending that I'm confident knowing what the hell I'm doing. I was terrified." Matthew went on to join an all-star cast in the hit film The Whole Nine Yards (2000). However, his next film, Serving Sara (2003) starring opposite Liz Hurley, was a box office bomb.

Friends halted production in 2004 after 10 years, and after doing the feature film sequel The Whole Ten Yards (2004), Matthew took a well-deserved break. He returned to the big screen to play the older version of Zac Efron in 17 Again, which was a box office hit, but after that he did mostly done television work, including playing the role of Oscar on the CBS television series The Odd Couple from 2015 to 2017. His last role was on the 2017 mini-series The Kennedys After Camelot, on which he played Ted Kennedy.

Matthew died on Saturday, October 28, 2023 at his home in Los Angeles.

FILMOGRAPHY:

17 Again (2009)
Birds of America (2008)
Numb (2007)
The Whole Ten Yards (2004)
The Beginning of Wisdom (2003)
Serving Sara (2002)
The Whole Nine Yards (2000)
Three to Tango (1999)
Almost Heroes (1998)
Fools Rush In (1997)
Getting In (1994)
Parallel Lives (1994)
She's Out of Control (1989)
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988)