{"id":37940,"date":"2023-10-28T21:55:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-29T01:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=37940"},"modified":"2023-10-28T21:55:19","modified_gmt":"2023-10-29T01:55:19","slug":"friends-star-matthew-perry-dead-at-54-found-in-hot-tub-sources-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/10\/28\/friends-star-matthew-perry-dead-at-54-found-in-hot-tub-sources-say\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Friends\u2019 star Matthew Perry dead at 54, found in hot tub, sources say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 \u201cFriends\u201d star Mathew Perry was found dead Saturday in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Authorities responded about 4 p.m. 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. There was no sign of foul play, the sources added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Los Angeles Police Department\u2019s robbery-homicide detectives are investigating the death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perry, the son of actor John Bennett Perry and Suzanne Marie Langford, onetime press secretary of Canadian Prime Minister Piere Trudeau, was born in 1969 and grew up between Montreal and Los Angeles after his parents separated when Perry was 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He got his start as a child actor, landing guest spots \u201cCharles in Charge\u201d and \u201cBeverly Hills 90210\u201d and playing opposite River Phoenix in the film \u201cA Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon\u201d in the 1980s and early 1990s. But his big break came when he was cast in \u201cFriends\u201d \u2014 originally titled \u201cFriends Like Us\u201d \u2014 a sitcom about six single New Yorkers navigating adulthood that premiered on NBC in 1994. It soon became a juggernaut, the anchor of the network\u2019s vaunted Thursday-night \u201cMust-See TV\u201d lineup, and turned Perry, then 25, and his cast mates Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt Leblanc and David Schwimmer into mega-stars almost overnight: At its high-water mark, in a 1996 post-Super Bowl slot, the series notched more than 50 million live viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Chandler Bing, the handsome, wisecracking roommate of Leblanc\u2019s Joey Tribbiani and, later, love interest of the fastidious Monica Geller, Perry distinguished himself in a crackling ensemble cast with his dry delivery, creating a catchphrase with a mere turn of inflection: Could he be any more Chandler? Soon, he was attached to major stars like Julia Roberts and appearing as a leading man opposite Salma Hayek in the 1997 rom-com \u201cFools Rush In.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a dark side to the life of one of television\u2019s most beloved funnymen, however. In his 2022 memoir \u201cFriends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,\u201d Perry recounted his lifelong struggle with addiction to alcohol and opioids, which led to multiple stints in rehab and a number of serious health issues, including a five-month hospitalization in 2018 following a colon rupture that left him, he wrote, with a two percent chance to live through the night. And it was fueled, he acknowledged during a \u201cFriends\u201d reunion special in 2021, by the pressure to land the joke in front of a live studio audience night after night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cNobody wanted to be famous more than me,\u201d Perry told The Times in April, discussing \u201cBig Terrible Thing\u201d at the Festival of Books<\/a>. \u201cI was convinced it was the answer. I was 25, it was the second year of \u2018Friends,\u2019 and eight months into it, I realized the American dream is not making me happy, not filling the holes in my life. I couldn\u2019t get enough attention. \u2026 Fame does not do what you think it\u2019s going to do. It was all a trick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Perry estimated he had relapsed \u201csixty or seventy times\u201d since first getting sober in 2001, he maintained a steady presence on American television, playing key parts in backstage dramedy \u201cStudio 60 on the Sunset Strip\u201d and therapy sitcom \u201cGo On,\u201d and making a steady stream of guest appearances on acclaimed shows like \u201cThe West Wing\u201d and \u201cThe Good Wife.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, for all his success as an actor and, more recently, as a memoirist, Perry told The Times in April that his work is not the primary thing he hoped to be his legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pressed to name how he\u2019d like to be remembered, he said: \u201cAs a guy who lived life, loved well, lived well, and helped people. That running into me was a good thing, and not something bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 \u201cFriends\u201d star Mathew Perry was found dead Saturday in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources said. Authorities responded about 4 p.m. to his home, where… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[6491,6492,6493],"class_list":["post-37940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-friends-star-matthew-perry-dead-at-54","tag-found-in-hot-tub","tag-sources-say"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}