He LIVED to LAUGH

THE FRIENDS STAR'S SUDDEN DEATH, AGED JUST 54, HAS LEFT FANS AND LOVED ONES REELING

- Naomi Toy

After the release of his searingly honest and deeply personal memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he opened up about decades of unimaginable addiction levels to drugs and alcohol, Matthew Perry revealed he'd found what he believed to be his purpose in life. Having come close to death many times, he would ask himself why he was alive. It wasn't just to entertain, as he had dreamed of doing since he was  a teenager and had realised when he landed the role of Chandler Bing in the sitcom behemoth Friends. What he wanted to do, and what he promised he would make his life's work, was to help people battling addiction.

"The best thing about me is that I can help people if they ask me to, he shared in an interview with Tom Power last year. "The best thing about me, bar none, is that 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. That's the best thing. 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, I want that to be the first thing that's mentioned. I'm going to live the rest of my life proving that."

Tragically, less than a year after making that vow, Perry would be dead at the age of just 54. At 4pm on Saturday, October 28, the American-Canadian actor was found dead in the jacuzzi at his home in Los Angeles. Earlier that day, he'd been playing pickleball - his new "clean" addiction. At the time of print, a cause of death had not been revealed although an autopsy had been completed. Police have said foul play was not suspected and there were no reports of illicit drugs being found at the scene.