Relive His Life in Pictures

Matthew Perry knew he’d really scored when he earned the part of sarcastic, lovable Chandler Bing on a freshman series about six best friends figuring it all out in New York City. 

“I was the second baseman for the New York Yankees. I couldn’t f–k that up,” the actor wrote in his 2022 memoir of landing on Friends alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. “I would never forgive myself.”

He credited his 10-season stint on the impossibly popular NBC comedy for helping him stay sober, noting, “When you’re earning $1 million a week, you can’t afford to have the seventeenth drink.”

And while his run as Chandler no doubt tops his life’s resume, it’s far from the only entry for the actor who died on Oct. 28. 

While he continued to collect TV and movie credits (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Good Wife, and, most recently, the 2017 mini-series The Kennedys After Camelot), perhaps one of the more meaningful accomplishments was his Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, his 2022 tome that detailed everything from his big Friends break to his famed romances to his previously private struggles with addiction.