From IMDB.com
Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Matthew Perry
was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, where he became a top-ranked
junior tennis player in Canada. However, after moving to Los
Angeles at the age of 15 to live with his father (actor John
Bennett Perry), he became more interested in acting.
In addition to performing in several high school stage productions,
he remained an avid tennis player. Perry ranked 17th nationally
in the junior singles category and third in the doubles category.
Upon graduating from high school, Perry intended to enroll
at the University of Southern California. However, when he
was offered a leading role on the television series, "Second
Chance" (1987), he seized the opportunity to begin his
acting career.
Perry appeared in the hit comedy film Whole Nine Yards, The
(2000), as the neighbor of a hit man played by Bruce Willis.
His other feature film credits include Fools Rush In (1997),
Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, A (1988), She's Out of
Control (1989) and Parallel Lives (1994) (TV).
He also co-starred with Chris Farley in the buddy comedy
Almost Heroes (1998) and in the romantic comedy, Three to
Tango (1999), opposite Neve Campbell. Perry currently resides
in Los Angeles. He enjoys playing ice hockey and softball
in his spare time.
From Biography.com
Actor. Born August 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
His parents divorced when he was less than a year old, and
Perry moved with his mother, Suzanne, to her hometown of Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada, where Suzanne later worked as a press secretary
for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
A talented tennis player, Perry was ranked No. 2 among junior
players in Canada when he was 13 years old. At virtually the
same time, he discovered acting, earning his first applause
for his role in a seventh-grade production called The Life
and Death of Sneaky Fitch.
When he was 15, Perry decided to move to Los Angeles to spend
some time with his father, John Bennett Perry, an actor best
known to audiences as the smooth-faced sailor on a series
of commercials for Old Spice.
Soon after he lost his first big U.S. tennis match, his acting
career kicked into gear when director William Richert spotted
Perry in a Los Angeles restaurant and asked him to audition
for his movie, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (filmed
in 1986; released 1988), starring River Phoenix. Perry landed
the role, which marked his first significant professional
acting experience.
Shortly after his graduation from high school, Perry landed
the lead in a short-lived sitcom called Second Chance. After
the show was cancelled after just one season in 1987-88, Perry
began a series of guest appearances on more successful sitcoms,
most notably Growing Pains.
He also appeared in the 1989 film She’s Out of Control,
starring Tony Danza, and had more significant roles in such
TV movies as Dance ‘Til Dawn (1988), Call Me Anna (1990),
Deadly Relations (1993), and the star-studded Parallel Lives
(1994). In 1992, Perry starred in another doomed sitcom, Home
Free, which again lasted only one season.
In 1994, Perry and his longtime friend and writing partner
Andrew Hill Newman pitched the pilot for a sitcom called Maxwell’s
House, about a group of twentysomething friends, to the NBC
television network.
Ultimately, NBC scrapped Maxwell’s House in favor of
a similar sitcom already in the works. The resilient Perry
auditioned for the show, called simply Friends, and won the
role of Chandler Bing, the terminally wisecracking member
of the titular gang of six young New Yorkers.
Friends was an overnight sensation, and Perry and his five
co-stars—Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox-Arquette, Lisa
Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer—became some
of the best-known faces on network TV.
Through six seasons and counting, as well as numerous salary
negotiations (in 2000 Perry and his fellow cast members signed
on to receive $750,000 per episode each), the show remained
one of the highest-ranking sitcoms in America, boosting NBC’s
popularity considerably and gaining an even bigger fan base
through syndication.
Perry’s first starring feature film role was in the
disappointing romantic comedy Fools Rush In (1997), co-starring
Salma Hayek. In 1998, he appeared with the late comedian Chris
Farley in Almost Heroes, Farley’s last film. Perry’s
next effort was another mediocre romantic comedy, Three to
Tango (1999), featuring fellow TV stars Neve Campbell and
Dylan McDermott as the other points of an unusual love triangle.
He had more success parlaying his preppy smart-aleck shtick
into the role of a suburban dentist in the hit comedy The
Whole Nine Yards (2000), co-starring Bruce Willis as the mob
hitman who moves in next door.
In addition to his career highs and lows, Perry has also
made headlines for his personal problems, including a 1997
stint in a rehab clinic after he became addicted to painkillers.
In May 2000, Perry was again hospitalized, this time for a
serious stomach ailment. Shortly after his release from the
hospital, Perry was involved in a car accident in which he
drove his Porsche into the porch of a Hollywood Hills home
after reportedly swerving to avoid another car.
In the spring of 2000, in the middle of filming Friends as
well as his next big screen project, Servicing Sara, with
Elizabeth Hurley, Perry was admitted to a rehabilitation clinic
again, this time for undisclosed reasons. He returned briefly
to the set of Friends to film the season's last two episodes,
but the future of Servicing Sara remains in doubt while Perry
is confined to rehab.
Perry has been romantically linked to the actresses Yasmine
Bleeth, Julia Roberts (whom he met when she guest-starred
on a 1995 episode of Friends), and Rene Ashton.
From AllMovieGuide.com
Handsome leading man Matthew Perry has managed to translate
the fame and popularity he garnered from playing Chandler
Bing on the hit NBC sitcom Friends into an increasingly successful
film career as a romantic comedy lead. Born in Massachusetts,
the son of actor John Bennett Perry, his parents divorced
when he was still a baby.
His mother got full custody and moved Perry to Ottawa, Canada,
where she worked as a political assistant (years later, Perry's
mother would work as a press secretary for prime minister
Pierre Trudeau). As a youth, Perry was an extremely talented
tennis player and was once ranked third in Canada's doubles
competition.
At the same time, the teenaged Perry was interested in acting
and had been appearing in school productions since he was
13. At age 15, he relocated to L.A. to join his father, in
hopes of becoming both a tennis pro and a working actor.
However, in 1984, Perry suffered a devastating loss during
a major tennis event and decided that he would have more success
as an actor. Shortly after the fateful sporting match, he
debuted on an episode of the sitcom Charles in Charge.
Though Perry was still in high school, it rapidly became
apparent that his education would take a backseat to acting.
While in a restaurant, he was spotted by director William
Richert, who offered the 16-year-old a small role opposite
River Phoenix in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988).
Though Perry wanted to become a successful professional actor,
his father was pressuring him to attend U.C.L.A. As a compromise,
Perry agreed that if he could not find an acting job in the
first year after high school graduation, he would attend college.
Not long after that, he was hired by Fox television to star
in the series Boys Will Be Boys.
The series bombed, but Perry was then starred opposite Valerie
Bertinelli in a new series, Sydney. While this show too was
short-lived, it started Perry on a professional guest-star
career that would land him roles on such series as Beverly
Hills 90210, Growing Pains, and his father's show 240 Roberts.
He made his sophomore film appearance in She's Out of Control
(1989) opposite Ami Dolenz and Tony Danza. In the early '90s,
Perry and his colleague, Andrew Hill, penned the pilot to
a situation comedy about a bunch of friends in their twenties
who like hanging out. They called their show Maxwell House
and sold it to Universal. They pitched the idea to NBC, but
the network had a similar vehicle in the works.
Instead of taking Perry and Hill's show, they offered to
co-star Perry in their program, Friends. The first episode
aired in 1994 and became a Top Ten hit. In features, Perry
had his first major success with the romantic comedy Fools
Rush In (1997).
From MatthewPerry fan Site
Matthew Perry was born on August 19, 1969 in Williamstown,
Massachusetts but raised in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the only
child of Suzanne and John Perry, who were divorced when he
was less than a year old. Perry's dad is known as the guy
in the Old Spice commercials. Perry's mom is a former Canadian
TV anchor and onetime press secretary for Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau.
Perry is a tennis-lover. He started at the age of 4. At 13,
he was ranked as the No.2 player in Ottawa. Perry began acting
in seventh grade when he played a gunslinger named Arriba
Arriba Geneva in his Ashbury College production of a play
called The Life and Death of Sneaky Fitch.
His mother married Canadian anchorman Keith Morrison when
Perry was 10 and proceeded to have four more children: Caitlin,
Emily, Willy, and Madeline. At 15, Perry moved to L.A. to
test his tennis and acting skills. He moved in with his father,
John's second wife, Debbie, and their daughter Marie. He was
prepared for his first big U.S. tennis match. Unfortunately,
things didn't go well so Perry decided to pursue an acting
career instead.
In 1985, Perry starred as George Gibbs in the 1985 Buckley
School production of Our Town. At 16, Perry got his first
big break from a waitress in a San Fernando Valley restaurant.
She gave him a napkin with a note written on it by a director
who had spotted Perry while dining. Perry auditioned and won
a small role in the 1988 River Phoenix film A Night in the
Life of Jimmy Reardon.
In 1993, Perry and good friend Andrew Hill Newman decided
to write their own sitcom, Maxwell's House, which was about
the lives of twentysomething friends. Too bad NBC already
had a similar sitcom in the works. This sitcom was later known
as Friends. In 1994, Perry auditioned for the show and got
the part of Chandler Bing.
As of now, Perry is enjoying the fame and fortune he is receiving
from Friends.
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