Friends star Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing, drowns at LA home

Actor Matthew Perry, who rose to international stardom as the sarcastic Chandler Bing in the hit 90s sitcom Friends, has died aged 54.

It’s believed Perry suffered a heart attack and drowned after playing two hours of pickleball, a racket-based sport similar to tennis that has recently exploded in popularity.

Perry revealed during an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2015 that he almost didn’t get to audition for the role that made him famous.

During the appearance, Perry recalled being desperate for work in 1994 and being broke.

“This happened to be the year that Friends was shot, but I was off the market because I had taken a job on a pilot called LAX 2194 that was about baggage handlers at L.A. Airport in the year 2194,” he told Meyers.

“So I was wearing a futuristic shirt. And little people played the aliens in which I had to sort out the aliens’ luggage and that was basically the show.”

But he received the script for Friends and thought it was “hilarious and great”.

“There was this part that was perfect for me and it was making me crazy that I couldn’t go up for it because of the baggage handlers show. I was losing my mind,” he said.

An executive at Fox watched LAX 2194 and called it the “worst thing we’ve ever seen in our lives”.

“He is available. You can hire him for your little show called Friends Like Us that then became Friends,” Perry recalled the executive saying.

Friends like us became just Friends and Perry went on to star on the show with Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow for 10

Celebrities and co-stars have paid tribute to Perry after he was reportedly found unresponsive in his hot tub by his assistant in his Los Angeles home on Saturday.

Gossip website TMZ, which originally broke the story, reported there was no foul play suspected or drugs found at the scene.

The death was confirmed by NBC, the network that aired Friends for more than a decade, on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“We are incredibly saddened by the too soon passing of Matthew Perry,” it posted.

“He brought so much joy to hundreds of millions of people worldwide with his pitch-perfect comedic timing and wry wit. His legacy will live on through countless generations.”

In an eerie final comment on social media, Perry posted a picture of himself in a jacuzzi on October 23, captioned: “Oh, so warm water swirling around makes you feel good? I’m Mattman.”

Perry was best known for his role in Friends, which ran for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004, co-starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow.

The series made celebrities of the six cast mates, playing a close-knit group of young adults who shared space in one another’s apartments and met for coffee at Manhattan cafe Central Perk.

Friends co-star Maggie Wheeler, who played Janice, Bing’s girlfriend in the show’s second and third seasons, took to social media to pay tribute.

“What a loss. The world will miss you, Matthew Perry. The joy you brought so many in your short lifetime will live on. I feel so very blessed by every creative moment we shared,” Wheeler wrote on Instagram.

Born in Massachusetts in 1969, Perry moved to Los Angeles when he was 15 to pursue acting.

Amid a series of minor TV roles in the late 80s and 90s, Perry joined the cast of Friends as its youngest member, and by 2002, the show’s popularity saw the cast being paid more than $1 million an episode.

But as fame and success made Perry a household name, the actor battled alcohol and drug addiction, revealing last year he had spent upwards of $9 million in his battle to get sober.

In October 2022, Perry published a memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which became a bestseller on both Amazon and The New York Times charts.

In the book, he recalled being told by castmate Jennifer Aniston his co-stars knew he was drinking again, while another time, the cast confronted him in his dressing room.

A low point for Perry came after his character had a high point: “I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment centre — at the height of my highest point in ‘Friends,’ the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”

In a foreword for the book, co-star Lisa Kudrow wrote that Perry was the only reason the cast laughed in the show’s iconic fountain opening titles.

“Matthew could make me laugh so hard every day, and once a week, laugh so hard I cried and couldn’t breathe,” Kudrow wrote.

“He was there, Matthew Perry, who is whip-smart... charming, sweet, sensitive, very reasonable and rational.

“That guy, with everything he was battling, was still there. The same Matthew who, from the beginning, could lift us all up during a gruelling night shoot for the opening titles inside that fountain.”

After Friends, Perry starred in three short-lived television ventures: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Mr Sunshine and Go On.

He also logged guest appearances or recurring roles in other hit TV shows, including Ally McBeal, Scrubs and Beverly Hills, 90210. Film credits to his name included Fools Rush In, The Whole Nine Yards, Almost Heroes and Three to Tango.

Perry was nominated for five Emmys, including as Outstanding Lead Actor in Friends in 2002, where both he and co-star Matt Le Blanc lost to Ray Ramano, and twice for Outstanding Guest Actor in The West Wing.

In the last photograph of Perry, the TV star met with a friend for dinner at Apple Pan, famous for its hamburgers, wearing a green tee shirt paired with black joggers and sneakers without laces.