Ask any woman what she wants in a man and a good sense of humour almost always tops the list.
Yet wisecracking Friends star Matthew Perry admits sometimes he has been so busy making jokes that his dates have ended in tears.
Still single at 38, Matthew has dated a string of eligible women including Julia Roberts, Yasmine Bleeth, Jennifer Capriati, Heather Graham and Meg Ryan.
“I always feel my best when I can crack someone up,” he admitted.
“When you go out for the first time, you kind of take on the persona of the best person you can be.
“But then, my thing was, I would never drop that. I would keep up that Prince Charming persona and keep making them laugh for about three weeks, until I’d feel my head was about to explode.
“Sometimes, I’d realise that, yeah, she really likes me but we’ve been out five times and I know nothing about her.
“It’s no accident Chandler Bing is a guy who is trying to deter his own human emotional feelings with laughter,” said Matthew.
“That’s what I did for years.”
Now he’s learning to listen to the person he’s with and find out who they are, instead of trying to impress them with jokes and charm.
“I’ve learned to listen more and find out who the other person is, then decide whether I would like to continue seeing them or not,” said Matthew.
“Finding out that they are a funny and interesting individual with a last name and a family is very intriguing.”
With his new movie Numb, Matthew is also shedding some of his happy-go-lucky image onscreen. The film is a real departure for the comedy star, who plays it straight in this drama about a writer with a depressive disorder.
“The character holed himself up in his house for weeks at a time. I’ve done that in the past,” he said soberly.
“And I just thought it was an excellent opportunity to do something different for me.”
Famously, Matthew has had his share of emotional highs and low points – and says his first lesson was that Friends did not bring him the happiness for which he had hoped.
“At first, it was everything I’d ever wanted. I was getting all this attention and it was wonderful.
“But I realised it wasn’t real and it became kind of scary to me. I spent a lot of time at home watching TV during that time, just not wanting to deal with reality. And that’s really what I related to most in the story.”
Friends became a worldwide hit in 1994, when Matthew was just 24, and turned him into an international star.
It was a success story he’d always dreamed about.
“I was a guy who wanted to become famous,” he admitted.
“There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks and you want the best seat in the restaurant.
“But I didn’t think what the repercussions would be.” But eating out became more hazardous, with Friends’ fans stalking him wherever he went.
“I was at a restaurant eating dinner with David Schwimmer and a woman came up and just handed me a baby,” recalled Matthew.
“Luckily enough, we had the presence of mind to put our forks down.
“She said, ‘You guys are on Friends.
Here.’ She handed us her infant so the ‘Friends’ could touch her baby. I don’t think she wanted us to keep him. We did give him back.”
In person, Matthew is often compared with Chandler Bing, the quick-witted guy who hides a difficult past with jokes.
But he admits he’s a driven man with a perfectionist streak.
Growing up in Canada, he became a champion teenage tennis player because he practised 10 hours a day. Matthew’s parents divorced when he was a baby and he was brought up by his mother, Suzanne, former press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Aged 15, he moved to Los Angeles to spend more time with his father, Seventies Old Spice model John Bennett Perry.
Competing in his first US tennis tournament, he failed to score a single point. So, realising he wasn’t going to make it on the circuit, he decided to follow his dad into acting.
“I saw a lot of the highs and lows,” recalled Matthew.
“I saw him go out for pilots and either get them or not and what that does to your attitude on a daily basis.
“So, his big lesson to me was to make sure there’s something else in your life more important than acting, or you’ll go bananas.”
Matthew’s career hit it’s biggest low in February 2001, when he abandoned filming Serving Sara with Elizabeth Hurley and went into rehab.
THREE years earlier, he had checked in to resolve an addiction to pain medication.
At his lowest ebb, Matthew was relying on two pints of vodka and up to 30 painkillers to get him through the day.
His weight at first ballooned to about 14 stone and then dropped to less than 11. In May 2000, he was hospitalised for pancreatitis, a rare inflammation that can be caused by alcohol and drug abuse.
“I went through a very, very difficult time and I stood up and took my swings and got through it,” he said simply.
But as a famous Friend, he was aware his illness was a story in itself for chat shows and gossip columns.
“I would watch The Tonight Show when I was in rehab, hoping that nobody would make any jokes. I think the first time I realised I was going to be OK was when I realised the host wasn’t making fun of me.”
Friends may not have been as sexy as Sex and the City, or as groundbreaking as The Office but it dominated TV sitcoms for almost 10 years.
Since Monica and Chandler moved to the suburbs to have a family and Matthew bid farewell to his 1million per episode fee, the actor has shifted out of the spotlight slightly.
Like the rest of the Friends gang, to date, he hasn’t quite cracked it as a film star.
“Obviously, I am always going to face the challenge of people seeing me as Chandler,” he said.
“So much was written about how sad we all were by the time we got to shooting the last few episodes, that the public thought we were all having nervous breakdowns.
“Yes, the end of Friends was a sad moment but you wake up and realise this is the end of an incredibly successful chapter in your life.
“You start feeling excited about moving on to something new and shaking your life up a bit.”
Although his critically acclaimed comedy drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was strangely axed after just 22 episodes, Matthew has three films in the pipeline, including romantic drama The Beginning Of Wisdom, body-swap comedy Seventeen, with Zac Efron, and Birds Of America, with Hilary Swank.
With his movie career back on track, his sense of humour intact and a life that has been clean and sober for years, a family is the last piece in the jigsaw for Matthew.
But despite being linked with old flame Lauren Grahame earlier this year, he admitted he’s still on the hunt for the right woman.
“My favourite line is to go up to a girl who’s wearing a pretty dress and say, ‘You know, I had to come talk to you because I have the same outfit’,” he grinned.
“If she laughs, there’s potential. If she doesn’t, I go home – and put on a pretty dress.”
lol. To make up for his absence I present you:
hehe. I checked if everything on the board works and so far so good. If you experience errors just let me know.
