Matthew Perry

Matthew Langford Perry was the son of American actor John Bennett Perry and Suzanne Langford. Before he was a year old, his parents divorced and the future actor moved to Ottawa with his mother. She began working in several different capacities and in 1978 she became a press aide to Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau. Perry went to school at Rockcliffe Park Public School and Lisgar Collegiate Institute before attending Ottawa’s exclusive Ashbury College. His mother remarried and his stepfather is the Canadian broadcast journalist, Keith Morrison. In school he spent most of the time, by his own admission, goofing around. At the age of 4 he started playing tennis and by the time he was 13, he was ranked as the No.2 player in Ottawa, 17th internationally and he and his doubles partner were ranked 3rd nationally in Canada. When he was 15, he moved to LA to live with his father aiming to become a professional tennis player. Luckily for his fans, he switched to acting when it became obvious he would not have a future in pro-tennis. He was still connected to his hometown as a big fan of the Ottawa Senators, going as far as wearing a shirt with the Senators logo in The Whole Nine Yards. He often made it to playoff games in Ottawa. He was best known for playing Chandler Bing on the series Friends.

Matthew Perry was 54 when he died in his Los Angeles-area home. It is believed that he drowned and was found in a jacuzzi or hot tub. Los Angeles police initially reported that no drugs were found at the scene, but it was later determined that the “acute effects” of the drug ketamine caused his death and was  ruled an accident by the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office. Then, nearly 10 months after his death, in August of 2024, the long-simmering investigation into the ketamine that killed him was back in the news with the announcement that five people had been charged with having roles in the overdose of the beloved Friends star.