Matthew Perry Was In Love With Practically All Of His Friends Co-stars
The world was shocked when beloved Friends star Matthew Perry passed away in October 2023 aged 54. Less than a year earlier, he’d published his autobiography, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. That “terrible thing” was his struggles with addiction; he confessed to relapsing “60 or 70 times” during his lifetime at the cost of nearly $9 million. Regardless, his fans, family, and co-stars loved him — as proved by the glowing tributes that poured in after his death. In his book, Perry also opened up about his love for his co-stars and admitted that his feelings for them went a lot deeper than people thought.
Mixing business with pleasure
Perry’s dating history is pretty fascinating. In 1995, for instance, the actor began dating possibly the most sought-after actress of the time: Julia Roberts. The Pretty Woman star famously played Chandler Bing’s girlfriend in the 1996 Friends two-parter, “The One After the Superbowl.” “Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me,” Perry wrote in his book. “I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me.”
Driven by fear
The Friends star also revealed that he thought Roberts was “slumming it” and that she would soon dump him. “Why would she not?” he asked. “I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.” He added that he couldn’t “begin to describe the look of confusion on her face” when he did it.
Not pulling any punches
It's clear, then, that Perry put it all on the table in this memoir. “So much has been written about me in the past,” the actor reasoned with People during the promo tour in October 2022, almost exactly a year before he died. “I thought it was time people heard from me. The highs were high, the lows were low. But I have lived to tell the tale, even though at times it looked like I wouldn’t. And it’s all in here.” That includes his secret dating history, his feelings for his Friends co-stars, and his addiction journey.
Co-stars show their support
Some of the information was even new to his Friends friends. Lisa Kudrow expressed this in the forward to Perry’s memoir. “[Perry] has survived impossible odds, but I had no idea how many times he almost didn’t make it,” Kudrow wrote. She explained how this was the first time she’d understood Perry’s journey “in detail” as well. “He’s now letting us into Matthew’s head and heart,” she added.
