The cause of death of actor Matthew Perry at his home Saturday will require additional investigative steps by Los Angeles County medical authorities before reaching a conclusion, records show.
The medical examiner updated Perry’s online file on Sunday afternoon (29), listing the cause of death as “postponed.”
“In cases where the cause of death cannot be determined at the time of autopsy, a deferred certificate will be issued until additional studies are completed,” according to guidelines from the Los Angeles coroner.
No criminal act is suspected, said a police source. CNN. However, the incident remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division.
Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said CNN that a call was answered Saturday at 4:07 p.m. for a water rescue emergency. Police responded at 4:10 p.m. and classified the call as a death investigation shortly after.
Matthew Perry, 54, was found unconscious in his spa, according to the Los Angeles Times, citing police sources.
Perry’s parents, John Bennett Perry and Suzanne Morrison, as well as his stepfather Keith Morrison, were seen arriving at the actor’s home Saturday evening amid the police response.
On Sunday, Perry’s family released a statement to People magazine saying they were “heartbroken by the tragic loss of our beloved son and brother.”
“Matthew brought so much joy to the world, both as an actor and as a friend,” the statement said. “You all meant so much to him and we appreciate the immense outpouring of love.”
Who was Matthew Perry
Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to an actor father and a journalist mother, Perry went to live with his mother in Ottawa, Canada, at a young age after his parents separated.
As he grew up, Perry pursued his passion for tennis and became one of the best tennis players in Canada. Like his father, he also developed an interest in theater after moving to Los Angeles as a teenager to live with him.
Perry’s first credited work was a small role in the drama “240-Robert” in 1979. From there, other small roles appeared on shows such as “Charles in Charge,” “Silver Spoons” and “The Tracey Ullman Show.”
Her first film role was in high school, opposite River Phoenix in the 1988 film “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon.”
A year before the film’s release, he starred in the sitcom “Second Chances” (later retitled “Boys Will Be Boys”), about a man who dies and returns to earth to mentor his younger self, played by Perry.
The series failed to find its audience, but Matthew Perry continued to land leading roles in television projects, including “Growing Pains,” “Who’s The Boss” and “Beverly Hills, 90210.”
Fame with “friends”
But it was his role as the affable and sarcastic Chandler on the 1994 sitcom “Friends” that made Matthew Perry famous.
The offbeat character earned him a Primetime Emmy nomination in 2002. He also received four other nominations for the prestigious television acting award, including two for his turn as Joe Quincy on “The West Wing.”
In “Friends,” Perry starred alongside Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow in a comedy about a close-knit group of friends living in New York.
The group became a staple of NBC’s incomparable “Must-See TV” programming, reaching a level of fame rarely seen on television or anywhere else.
Off-screen, the actors became as close as their characters on the show and traded together to become among the highest-paid actors on a television series at the time.
The series helped boost Perry’s career, and he quickly landed big screen roles in 1997’s “Fools Rush In,” 1998’s “Almost Heroes” and 2000’s “The Whole Nine Yards.”
Although “Friends” is the most well-known television series he starred in, Perry also starred in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” “Mr. Sunshine” and “The Odd Couple.”
Book of memories and controversies
In November 2022, he published a memoir titled “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir.”
In it, Perry revealed that his opioid abuse led to a ruptured colon at the age of 49. Doctors gave him a 2% chance of survival, according to the actor himself, and he remained in a coma for two weeks. He then remained hospitalized for months.
The actor required 14 surgeries to repair all the abdominal damage and admitted to going to rehab 15 times in hopes of kicking his drug addiction.
“What surprises me the most is my resilience,” the artist told People last year, referring to the book.
“The way I can recover from all this torture and horror. In wanting to tell the story, even though it was a little scary to tell all its secrets in a book, I left nothing out. It’s all there,” he stressed.
Perry has been candid about his struggle with addiction, which occurred even at the peak of his career.
“I was taking 55 Vicodins a day, I weighed 120 pounds, I was on Friends, watched by 30 million people – and that’s why I can’t watch the show, because I was brutally thin,” explained Perry in an interview with CBC. Last year.
“I haven’t watched the show, and I haven’t watched the show, because I might say, ‘alcohol, opioids, alcohol, cocaine.’ I could tell season after season by the way I looked. That’s why I don’t want to watch it, because that’s what I see,” he revealed.
Perry began dating literary executive Molly Hurwitz in 2018 and became engaged to her in 2020. They ended their engagement in 2021.
At the time, the actor said in a statement that “sometimes things just don’t work out and this is one of them.” I wish Molly the best.
See also: Matthew Perry fans pay tribute in front of “Friends” apartment
Share:
