In one of the last photos he shared online before his death, Matthew Perry stands with his arm around his father, fellow actor John Bennett Perry.
“Here is me, and my father John, both holding a beverage,” the Instagram caption on the photo, shared on October 16, reads.
To any casual onlooker, it’s nothing more than a warm father-son moment captured on camera. But Matthew’s relationship with his father hadn’t always been smooth sailing.
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‘Where is my dad?’
In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew opened up about his home life, revealing John “abandoned” him and his mother, Suzanne Perry, to pursue an acting career in California.
Matthew was nine months old at the time, and the couple divorced when he was one.
”What the f–k is an actor? And where the f–k is my dad?” he wrote in the memoir, also recalling he only knew his father through his appearances on TV.
“That was mostly the way that I saw my father when I was young, on TV shows,” Matthew told Katie Couric in an interview.
“You know, getting shot through a door on Mannix or something like that. That’s my dad.”
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It would be several years before Matthew attempted to reconnect with John. By 15, he was a “broken human being”, and moved from Canada to Hollywood in the hopes of getting back in touch with his father. He moved in with John and enrolled in school.
“I felt like I hadn’t spent any time with my father, and wanted to,” he recalled to Buzzfeed in 2015.
“I did a production of Our Town at my school, and I think my dad was kind of hoping I wasn’t going to be good in it. But I guess I was good. He bought me an acting book called Acting With Style, and the inscription read, ‘Another generation shot to hell.'”
According to the memoir, Matthew’s move to Hollywood caused a great rift between the Friends star and his mother.
A mutual struggle
A passion for acting was not the only thing father and son shared.
John had alcoholism, and after moving to join him in Hollywood, Matthew also began grappling with the disease.
He drank six vodka tonics every night, a ritual he declared as the “best part of [his] day” in his memoir.
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Matthew was plagued by substance abuse issues and addiction throughout his life, including during his years on Friends. The actor went to rehab 15 times and underwent several surgeries.
In 2019, at the age of 49, he nearly died after his colon burst from opioid overuse. He was in a coma for two weeks and spent five months in the hospital.
Sharing the screen
While Matthew is undoubtedly the more famous of the pair, John Bennett Perry made a name with many well-known roles through the years.
His on-screen credits range from movies such as Independence Day, George of the Jungle, Farewell to the King and Lipstick to TV series including The West Wing, LA Law, Murder, She Wrote and Little House on the Prarie.
John, now 82, is also famous for portraying ‘The Sailor’ in ads for Old Spice during the 1970s and ’80s.
He and Matthew shared the screen several times. John played his son’s on-screen father in the film Fools Rush In and in an episode of Scrubs.
He also had a brief appearance on Friends, starring in the episode ‘The One with Rachel’s New Dress’ as the father of Rachel Green’s boyfriend Joshua, played by Tate Donovan.
If you or someone you know is in need of support for mental health issues contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Alcohol and Drug Support Line on 1800 198 024.