All there for him..
Friends join together in ‘simple ceremony’ for Matthew Perry
TRAGIC Matthew Perry is reunited with his Friends co-stars one last time at a moving church funeral service before being laid to rest.
The “intimate and simple” hour-long ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday was attended by around 20 mourners and ended with a rendition of the Peter Gabriel hit Don’t Give Up.
Jennifer Aniston, 54, Lisa Kudrow, 60, Courteney Cox, 59, and David Schwimmer, 57, were spotted arriving together dressed in black, while Matt Leblanc, 56, joined them inside.
Perry’s tearful mother Suzanne, 84, and stepdad Keith Morrison, 76 – who was one of the pallbearers – were seen embracing and comforting mourners, including Perry’s father John, 82.
An onlooker said: “It looked like a very sombre occasion – as you would expect, given the circumstances.”
The service was held at Forest Lawn Church of the Hills six days after Perry, 54, who found fame as Chandler Bing in the sitcom, was found dead at home in his hot tub in an apparent drowning.
The church’s cemetery is the final resting place for a number of Hollywood stars, including Carrie Fisher, Bette Davis and Stan Laurel, and is close to the Warner Bros studios where Friends was filmed for 10 years. After the service, Perry’s body was moved in a dark wooden coffin for a private family-only burial.
LEGACY
The star, who battled drink and drug problems throughout his life, was pronounced dead last Saturday after officials received a phone call reporting he was underwater in his hot tub and not breathing. On the same day as his funeral, the Matthew Perry Foundation was launched in his name to help those struggling with addiction. The organisation’s website leads with a quote from the star: “When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned – I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned.” Perry’s cause of death remains unconfirmed but pals say he was “100%” sober lately. Investigators uncovered no illegal drugs at his home and initial toxicology reports found no meth or fentanyl in his system. More in-depth testing, which could take weeks, is under way to establish if he had any prescription medication in his system. In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the Emmy-nominated actor was candid about his decades-long opioid and alcohol addictions. The star, who never married and had no children, had a net worth of around £97million at the time of his death and said he spent around £7m trying to get sober. He also revealed he had attended 6,000 AA meetings, detoxed 65 times, was in rehab 15 times and had 14 surgeries to try to mitigate the damage to his body. A female friend seen playing pickleball with Perry hours before he died said the star had felt unwell and “fatigued” in the days before his death.