This article discusses alcohol and drug addiction.
George Clooney is opening up about his decades-long friendship with late actor Matthew Perry.
George, 62, shared a super close friendship with Matthew, who died suddenly in October in an apparent drowning. He was 54.
While the pair knew each other since Matthew was just 16, they got especially close due to their time filming their separate NBC shows “side by side.” Matthew starred in the hit sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004, while George famously appeared in ER, which aired from 1994 to 2009.
During his time on Friends, Matthew was dealing with alcohol and substance addiction, which led to serious medical complications. He fell into a coma in 2018 when his colon exploded due to drug use, and later revealed that he was taking 55 Vicodin pills a day, as well as methadone, Xanax, and a quart of vodka.
Reflecting on their decades-long friendship now, George admitted that it was super difficult to watch Matthew dealing with addiction while he filmed Friends.
“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old,” George told Deadline in a new interview. “We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid.”
George went on to recall how even “as a kid,” Matthew was open about his dreams to star in a sitcom. He recalled, “All he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind, and Grant Heslov, was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom, and I would be the happiest man on earth.’”
Interestingly, this is something that Matthew was super open about in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. in the book, he revealed that he got onto his knees and prayed that he’d become famous just three weeks before landing his Friends audition.
“About three weeks before my audition for Friends, I was alone in my apartment on Sunset and Doheny, 10th floor — it was very small, but it had a great view, of course — and I was reading in the newspaper about Charlie Sheen. It said that Sheen was yet again in trouble for something, but I remember thinking, Why does he care — he's famous,” Matthew wrote.
“Out of nowhere, I found myself getting to my knees, closing my eyes tightly, and praying. I had never done this before,” he went on. “‘God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.’”
“Three weeks later, I got cast in Friends. And God has certainly kept his side of the bargain — but the Almighty, being the Almighty, had not forgotten the first part of that prayer as well,” he added, referring to his alcohol and drug addiction.
Speaking of Matthew’s time on Friends, George claimed that despite landing his dream sitcom role, the actor still “wasn’t happy.”
“He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot... We were there right next to each other... It was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him,” George claimed.
“We just knew that he wasn’t happy, and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life,” George added.
