PRIME TIME'S PRIME
PROSPECT
He's a terror on the court. And grabby with the remote.
Otherwise, Matthew Perry of Friends is fairly perfect - and
available. Takers, anyone?
By Karen S. Schneider and Craig Tomashoff
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a chummy cast, he's a friend among Friends
Matthew Perry can smell blood. "That's choking!" he
shouts across a Los Angeles paddle-tennis court, then fires off a
shot that narrowly misses the head of his opponent, actor Patrick
Van Horn. Perry flashes a smile. "I'm trying to kill
them," he says. Before he can, the ball comes rocketing back
at him. "I dedicate this one to all the little people,"
he heroically proclaims as he whacks the ball into the net. Not
only does he lose the point, he falls flat on his butt.
"See what your boasting brings you?" taunts Van Horn.
Perry, undaunted, jumps to his feet. "No let up!" he
tells his partner, actor-writer Andrew Hill Newman, who rises to
the rally cry with a wicked passing shot straight down the line.
"Good shot!" shouts Perry. "You are allowed to
sweat now."
A moment later, though, Newman swings and misses - and that match
is lost. "Uh-oh," says Newman, glancing over at a glum
Perry. "Now he'lls be the Most Serious Man Alive."
And for a good 30 seconds, Perry is. Then, with a good-natured
grumble, the 26-year-old actor hands over the $5 he wagered and
is back cracking wise again. It is, in fact, very hard for Perry
to stay miserable right now. After all, in the 18 months since he
auditioned for the NBC sitcom Friends, just about everything in
Perry's life has been golden. The quirky show about
twentysomethings who puzzle out life over bottomless cups of
gourmet coffee was last year's breakout sitcom, the top-ranked
show for most of the summer and the most unabashedly imitated
comedy of the current season. Perry and his five fellow Friends
stars are now living every actor's dream of unbridled success.
"I've seen women lie down on the street and get naked in
from of him," teases Newman, who has been a close friend of
Perry's since they met at a poker game four years ago. Okay, not
naked. But sometimes female fans do plop down at his restaurant
table as it they were old pals.What does Perry do in the face of
such attention? Often blushes, runs for cover and, the next day,
turns the experience into a self-effacing line he can use on the
show as his alter ego, Chandler. Friends co-executive producer
Marta Kauffman says Perry often makes sharp script additions:
"We've discovered his incredible depth. He's not just a
funny guy."
"People assume he's just a funny guy," ventures costar
Jennifer Aniston, who has been pals with Perry since they met at
a party five years ago. "But he's also very sensitive. He's
just a good guy, not a guy guy."
Consider how Perry spent his summer vacation - his first break
since becoming one of the hottest properties on network TV. Did
he hang out in the fashionable Hamptons? Hardly. Belly up to the
bar at the Viper Room? No. Instead, he took two extended trips to
see both sets of his grandparents, one in Ottawa, the other in
Williamstown, Mass. "He genuinely cares about how we are all
doing," says his father, John.
Perry's Friends costars could - and do - say the same thing.
"He is," says Matt LeBlanc, "a sweetheart."
And this would be - what? - a compliment? Whatever he is (and
fear not, we will return to this guy-guy business), Perry is an
actor whose years in the industry - including a stint as Tracey
Gold's boyfriend on Growing Pains and a string of sitcom flops -
have taught hime to be grateful. "I'd say 88 percent of it
is great," he says of his newfound fame, "and 12
percent is a little scary." And even the scary part - say,
this sudden public interest in his life - is not, he says, all
that bad. "The attention is gratifying," says Perry,
"and part of what we're in this business for. The good thing
is - and I know it sounds trite - I get to get up at 9 a.m. and
drive to an unbelievably wonderful place to work."
It doesn't hurt that he gets to do his driving in a brand-new
black Porsche 911. Or that he gets to play tennis with John
McEnroe and street hockey with Wayne Gretzky at celebrity charity
events. Back in June, Perry got an even more precious perk: the
chance to hit a ball into the stands of the Toronto SkyDome when
he was in town visiting his mother. Okay, the Blue Jays weren't
in town that day, so the place was deserted - and yes, he fudged
things a bit by standing at second base to take his cuts, but
hey, a dinger's a dinger. Perry watched in absolute ecstasy as
the ball flew over the fence, then told his mother, whom he'd
brought along as a witness the feat, "You can just kill me
now."
In fact, Perry is living life to the hilt in his fashion. In June
he bought a three-bedroom Hollywood Hills spread complete with
40-inch-screen TV in the living room and a Foosball table in the
center of the dining room. One of his few pieces of furniture is
a magazine rack, which currently holds a biography of Mickey
Mantle and a Big Bird coloring book. The refrigerator is stocked
with Gatorade and raspberry yogurt, the garbage can filled with
fast-food wrappers. Says Aniston of her pal's never-left-the-dorm
decor: "He's a child in a man's body."
Perry swears that he hasn't changed much in any way. "A few
years ago my friends and I were so uncomfortable going up to
women in bars," he says, "that we came up with this
idea where we'd pay each other $20 to go up to someone and say
anything." Perry's icebreaker: "Hi, I'm completely
filled with fruit and cheese." No, it didn't work. Today,
when he can sit back and let the women do the approaching, he
remains something less than a smooth operator. "Nine times
out of 10," he says, "I'll mess it up anyway."
Certainly, he has the genes to be a true charmer. Perry is the
only child of Suzanne and John Perry, who were divorced when he
was less than a year old. Perry got his rugged good looks from
his father, a Los Angeles actor best known for Old Spice
commercials. As for his glibness, Matthew got that from his
mother, a former Canadian TV anchor and onetime press secretary
for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. "He was always quick and
funny," says John of his son. And used the talent to good
advantage. "I didn't get very good grades," says Perry,
"but the teachers let me pass because they thought I was
funny." Says Suzanne of Matthew's antics: "He was
preparing his shtick."
He was also working on his backhand. After his parents divorced,
Perry moved with his mother from Williamstown, where his father's
family lived, to Ottawa, his mother's hometown. Encouraged by his
grandfather, Perry took up tennis, At 4, he began hitting balls
at the local country club - and never stopped. Says Perry:
"I spent my summers playing tennis with 60-year-old
men."
There were young women around too. "When he was 13 he
developed quite a crush on a girl," says Suzanne. "They
had a very intense relationship." Perry and his girlfriend
talked endlessly on the phone and spent hours together. Then, one
afternoon, Perry left his girlfriend in one room, found his
mother in another and blurted out a confession: "One minute
I looked over at her and I liked her. The next minute I looked
over at her and I didn't." What could a mother say?
"Matthew," Suzanne offered, "this is the beginning
of a long career."
Wisely, perhaps, Perry concentrated on other interests: tennis
and acting. The No. 2-ranked junior player in Ottawa at 13, the
otherwise gentle-tempered Perry was, he says, intensely
competitive and rarely accepted defeat gracefully. "I was a
moron," says Perry, "throwing my racket and getting
angry." In the theatre, luckily, the explosions were only
make-believe. In seventh grad he played a gunslinger named Arriba
Arriba Geneva in his Ashbury College production of a play called
The Life and Death of Sneaky Fitch - and was hooked. "When I
got my first laugh onstage," says Perry, "I said,
'Whoa! I really like this.' "
His mother married Canadian anchorman Keith Morrison when Perry
was 10 and proceeded to have four more children: Caitlin, now 14,
Emily, 10, Willy, 8, and Madeline, 6. Though Perry was close to
them, at 15 he decided to head to L.A. to test his skills both on
court and onstage - and to get to know his father better. "I
didn't get much of a chance to see him as a kid," says
Perry. "He'd call up and say, 'I'm getting killed on Mannix
this Thursday. Look for me.' " Perry moved in with his
father, John's second wife, Debbie, and their daughter Marie, now
13, and prepared for his first big U.S. tennis match.
"My family came out to watch me, and I got killed,"
recalls Perry. "After that there was no question of a tennis
career. I knew I wasn't good enough."
And so he settle on acting. His father remembers watching
Matthew's 1985 Buckley School debut as George Gibbsin Our Town
with mixed emotions. "I though, 'We've got a problem here,'
" says John. " 'He's good. There's another generation
shot to hell!' "
A waitress in San Fernando Valley restaurant gave her 16-year-old
customer his first big break - in the form of a napkin with a
note written on it by a director who had spotted Perry while
dining. "He thought I'd be perfect for his next movie,"
says Perry. "I though 'Yeah, it'll be shot in the back of
his van and called On Golden Blond."
Perry auditioned anyway and won a small role in the 1988 River
Phoenix film A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. Other bit
parts came his way, including one in 1988's Dance Till Dawn, in
which he played Christina Applegate's dud prom date.
Frustrated by the lack of good parts, Perry and his friend Newman
decided to write their own sitcom in 1993. The result, which they
called Maxwell's House, revolved around the travails of
twentysomething friends. It was good enough to interest NBC>
"Suddenly I was wearing a suit and going to meetings,"
says Perry. "It was fun." Less fun was the discovery
that NBC already had a similar sitcom in the works. In the end,
says Perry, NBC canned Maxwell's House for Friends. If you can't
beat 'em, he concluded, audition. "My God!" thought
Perry, who got a chance to see the script through auditioning
friends. "Their writers did a better job than I did."
Perry read for the show's producers on a Wednesday in 1994, for
the production company on Thursday, for the network on Friday.
And on Monday morning he was on the set working.
The friends he has made on the job, says Perry, are keepers; they
hang out together and give each other counsel. "He really
helped me when I was going through a relationship problem a year
ago," says Aniston. "He's a great listener." Adds
Lisa Kudrow: "He's just somebody you want to be
around." His family agrees. "His little brothers and
sisters worship him," says his mother. And he them. "He
always comes to Marie's track meets and basketball games,"
says John.
As he embarks on the beginning of the show's second season, Perry
has high hopes for the future - and he's not talking ratings.
"I've said jokingly that the romantic area of my life is
pathetic," he says. "But it's really not. I just
haven't put that much effort into dating." His mother is all
for his plan to step up the effor - though a match may not come
easy. "He's got a serious side when it comes to women,"
she says. His pals disagree. Matt? Serioius? No way. "But he
is a very good kisser," jokes Newman. "I would put Good
Kisser right after Pays for Everything on the list of reasons we
like him." Friends producer Kauffman has a reason of her
own. "He is," she says, "the Cutest Man
Alive."
This article was taken from the September 25, 1996 issue of
People Weekly PRIME TIME'S PRIME PROSPECT