Four days after Friends star Matthew Perry's death, conversations he's had about Christianity are re-surfacing. 

Perry has been open about struggles and addictions which he shared with SirusXM. "The first time I prayed, it was the prayer of a 14-year-old and I was 24," he said, referring he prayed, "God, do whatever You want to me; just please make me famous."

About two weeks later, he was cast for Friends. 

During the shows success, his struggles grew. In his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing released in 2022, he shared how a jet ski accident in Las Vegas in 1997 led to his Vicodin addiction.

Perry was there to film When Fools Rush In. The doctor prescribed Vicodin which is used to treat moderate to severe pain. At one point, he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and had to try various ploys in order to get them. He’d fake migraines or other pain and sit through MRIs with different doctors.

"I weighed 128 pounds, I was on Friends getting watched by 30 million people—and that’s why I can’t watch the show, because I was brutally thin,” Perry said in a CBC interview. “I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, ‘Drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine,’” he said. “I could tell season by season, by how I looked. That’s why I don’t want to watch it, because that’s what I see.”

When he was 18, Perry said he was drinking every day. "At that time I was drinking out with friends, a lot, and then at 1:45 I would say 'I'm going to go home' and I would race across town to a liquor store, buy a bottle of vodka, and drink as much as I had with the other guys that night," he shared in a Nightline interview. 

It was hitting rock bottom that really led to Perry reaching out to God.  “'God, please help me,’ I whispered. ‘Show me that you are here. God, please help me,’” he shared in his book. 

“I started to cry. I mean, I really started to cry - that shoulder-shaking kind of uncontrollable weeping. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because, for the first time in my life, I felt OK. I felt safe and taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life, and sadness, all was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion."

“I had been in the presence of God. I was certain of it. And this time I had prayed for the right thing: help.”

The 54-year-old actor died at his Los Angeles home on Sat. Oct 28, 2023. The Friends official Instagram account paid tribute to the late actor.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Friends (@friends)

There's not much available to see if Perry had a faith in Christ, but he was often open about his journey to realizing there was a God.