Friends star Matthew Perry found dead at 54

Mathew Perry
US actor Matthew Perry has been found dead at his Los Angeles home. -AP

Friends TV star Matthew Perry has been found dead at his home in Los Angeles, according to media reports.

Perry, 54, was found at a Los Angeles-area residence on Saturday after authorities rushed to a call over a cardiac arrest, emergency sources told the publication.

Perry was found in a jacuzzi with no sign of foul play, a law enforcement source told the Los Angeles Times.

Asked by AP to confirm a police response to what was listed as Perry's home, LAPD officer Drake Madison told The Associated Press that police had gone to the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles "for a death investigation of a male in his 50s."

There were no drugs at the scene, according to celebrity website TMZ.

Perry was best known for his role as Chandler Bing on all 10 seasons of Friends, starring opposite Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer as a friend group in New York.

As Chandler, Perry played a sarcastic yet insecure and neurotic roommate of Joey and Ross, played by LeBlanc and Schwimmer respectively.

The series was beloved by millions of fans worldwide, with all the main cast members reuniting in 2021 for a reunion special.

The cast of Friends at the 54th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in 2002.

Perry received one Emmy nomination for his Friends role and two more for playing an associate White House counsel on The West Wing. He had recurring roles in other hit TV shows including Ally McBeal, Scrubs and Beverly Hills, 90210.

His notable film roles included starring opposite Salma Hayek in the rom-com Fools Rush In and opposite Bruce Willis in The Whole Nine Yards.

The Massachusetts-born actor grew up in Ottawa after his mother, a Canadian journalist who once served as press secretary to former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, divorced Perry's father and married a Canadian broadcast personality.

At the age of 15, Perry moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and improvisational comedy.

In recent years he had begun to open up about his health battles, which ranged from pancreatitis to alcohol and opioid addiction.

Perry documented his struggle with addiction and an intense desire to please audiences in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.

"Friends was huge. I couldn't jeopardise that. I loved the script. I loved my co-actors. I loved the scripts. I loved everything about the show but I was struggling with my addictions which only added to my sense of shame," he wrote.

"I had a secret and no one could know.

"I felt like I was gonna die if the live audience didn't laugh, and that's not healthy for sure. But I could sometimes say a line and the audience wouldn't laugh and I would sweat and sometimes go into convulsions," Perry wrote.

"If I didn't get the laugh I was supposed to get, I would freak out. I felt that every single night. This pressure left me in a bad place. I also knew of the six people making that show, only one of them was sick."

Perry recalled in his memoir that Aniston confronted him about being inebriated while filming.

"I know you're drinking," he remembered her telling him once. "We can smell it," she said, in what Perry called a "kind of weird but loving way, and the plural 'we' hit me like a sledgehammer."

In the foreword to Perry's memoir, Lisa Kudrow described him as "whip smart, charming, sweet, sensitive, very reasonable, and rational." She added: "That guy, with everything he was battling, was still there."

with AP