Matthew Perry appeared in 14 feature films, 33 series and 14 TV movies between 1979 and 2017. But in the eyes of the world, the career of Perry, who was found dead in his jacuzzi in California's Beverly Hills on Sunday, October 28, at the age of 54, could be summed up in two words: Chandler Bing. Over the course of 236 episodes of Friends, hundreds of millions of viewers accompanied him as he transformed from a dynamic, sarcastic, insecure young executive into a good family man ready to leave Manhattan for the suburbs.

But, at the same time as Friends was making it to be one of the biggest series in the world, Perry was sinking into addiction, first to alcohol, then to painkillers, involving multiple stays in rehabs. He retraced this path in his autobiography, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, published at the end of 2022. The actor had come close to death in 2018, suffering from pancreatitis whose side effects had plunged him into a coma.

Perry was born on August 19, 1969 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His father, John Bennett Perry, is an actor, while his mother, Suzanne Marie Morrison, is a Canadian journalist who worked with former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, father of Justin. Perry's parents separated shortly after his birth, and Perry grew up in Canada, where he developed a passion for tennis. At the age of 15, he joined his father in Los Angeles.

As a high-school student, he embarked on an acting career, appearing in a number of series for one episode at a time. In 1988, after finishing high school, he landed his first recurring role, that of a high-school student in Boys Will Be Boys. The series was cancelled after one season. Until 1994, Perry appeared for a few episodes in a number of different successful series (Who's the Boss? Beverly Hills 90210). In the spring of 1993, his luck seemed to change when he landed the lead role, that of an irresponsible young man who still lives with his mother, in Home Free, a family sitcom programmed on Friday nights on ABC, one of the three major American networks. But the series was a flop with the public and went off the air after 13 episodes.

In 1991, Perry starred in an episode of Dream On, a series created by David Crane and Martha Kaufman. Three years later, the duo sold their new project, Insomnia Cafe which followed the tribulations of six friends as they enter adulthood together in Manhattan, to the Warner Bros. television subsidiary. NBC then acquired Insomnia Cafe now Friends, which the network planned to air on prime time Thursday evenings. After auditioning, Perry landed the role of Chandler Bing, which he would play for almost 10 years, from September 22, 1994, when the first episode of Friends aired, to May 10, 2004, a dark day for millions of fans, deprived of their weekly dose of friendship and romance.

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