After Matthew Perry’s tragic loss of life on October 28, a resurfaced interview from six months in the past is shedding new gentle on what the Friends actor hoped his legacy can be, and the way he wished to be remembered. “As a guy who lived life, loved well, lived well, and helped people,” the enduring actor instructed the Los Angeles Times throughout an April 2023 interview. “That running into me was a good thing, and not something bad.”
He additionally addressed the subject as he was selling his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. “The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking, can you help me?’ I can say yes and follow up and do it,” he stated in November of 2022 throughout a Q with Tom Power sit-down interview. “It’s the best thing.”
The Fools Rush In star added that he didn’t need his legendary sitcom to be the very first thing folks considered when he died “And I’ve said this for a long time; when I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” he defined. “I want that [helping people to stop drinking] to be the first thing that’s mentioned, and I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.”
Matthew was reportedly discovered unresponsive in a sizzling tub at his L.A. dwelling on Saturday on the age of 54. Just a 12 months earlier than his loss of life, he dropped revelation after revelation in his memoir, which additionally detailed his battle with dependancy and subsequent well being points — together with a ruptured colon due to opioid use.
“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” he wrote in an excerpt. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
Matthew additionally confessed that he went to rehab 15 instances in an try to recuperate. “It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education,” he wrote. “Your sober date changes, but that’s all that changes. You know everything you knew before, as long as you were able to fight your way back without dying, you learn a lot.”
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