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.”

“Numb” is a deliciously dark, low-key, psychological comedy starring Matthew Perry (Chandler from “Friends”). Perry plays a character called Hudson who suffers from depersonalization disorder, meaning that he seems disconnected from reality and has a lot of anxiety about it. Just when he is starting to get help for his condition he meets the girl of his dreams which pushes him even harder to find a cure or at least a cover up so that she will never know.

While the plot summary on the back cover of the DVD describes “Numb” as a romantic comedy of sorts, I think that is pushing the boundaries of the genre. Yes, there is comedy, and yes, there is a love interest, but this is definitely not the same kind of film as, say, “You’ve Got Mail” or “27 Dresses.” It has a much more subtle humor and is considerably darker than your typical romantic comedy. I should also mention that this is definitely an “R” rated film with its language, drug references, and sexual content.

Hudson’s love interest, Sarah, is played by Lynn Collins (”The Dog Problem” and “The Merchant of Venice”). Her character is seemingly drawn to slightly disturbed men (which proves only helpful to Hudson) but is otherwise charming, warm, and exactly what he needs. The chemistry between Perry and Collins is remarkable, especially considering the extremely downplayed performance that Perry delivers throughout the film.

It is perhaps Perry’s performance that made this film worthwhile to me, as most of the comedy comes from the other characters in the film. He gives a performance unlike any I’d seen from him in the past, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. He rarely smiles or cracks a joke, instead showing a much more introspective and versatile side of his acting chops. What makes his character interesting, however, is that he never loses that goodness or heart that everyone loved from him on “Friends.”

Other cast members include Kevin Pollak (”The Usual Suspects”) who plays Hudson’s best friend, Tom, and Mary Steenburgen (”Life as a House”) who plays one of Hudson’s therapists, Dr. Cheryl Blaine. This was Pollak and Perry’s third collaboration after “The Whole Nine Yards” and its sequel and their on-screen friendship is wonderful. Steenburgen brings a lot of comedy to the film as she loses herself in therapy sessions with Hudson when she finds herself attracted to him and acts upon it in increasingly inappropriate ways.

The film was written and directed by Harris Goldberg, writer of the “Deuce Bigalow” films and “Without a Paddle.” Despite warnings from friends and colleagues, he wrote this auto-biographical script about his own trouble with depersonalization and love.

The DVD features include a feature commentary track with Goldberg, as well as a featurette called “Numb: An Inside Look.” The featurette has actor, director and producer interviews about the writing of the script, casting and making of the film itself. I found that the segments with Goldberg fascinating as he talks about his struggle with depersonalization and writing the script. It was also interesting to learn that Perry felt more like the character of Hudson than any other role he’s played in the past.

For a unique dark comedy with a great cast, check out “Numb” in your local store’s new releases section.

MATTHEW PERRY TOLERATES OUR INQUISITOR LONG ENOUGH TO REVEAL HIS CHINSECURITY, THOSE INTIMACY ISSUES, AND THE PERFECT WOMAN

If he so chose, Matthew Perry could spend the rest of his days tossing hundred-dollar bills onto a bonfire for the sheer spectacle of it. When you earn a million dollars an episode—as the 37-year-old did in the last season of Friends—work becomes more choice than necessity. So it’s heartening to see Perry off his couch and back in the game on NBC, playing a genius comedy writer in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin’s promising new drama set backstage on a Saturday Night Live-like show. It’s also a relief to see his character careening through the show’s first episode in a Vicodin haze, rather than reading tabloid reports of Perry careening into anything else, given his storied battles with alcohol, drugs, and that porch he once dispatched with his Porsche. The now-sober Perry, who before landing in Hollywood spent his early teens as a ranked tennis amateur in his native Canada, has never married but does profess to have game off the court, especially with the kind of lady who melts at the very strains of “You’ve Got a Friend.”—ANDREW GOLDMAN

ELLE: Please relate the details of your first sexual experience.

MATTHEW PERRY: People really answer that?

ELLE: All the time.

MP: It was rather late in the game. I was 18. I remember feeling a combination of excitement and sheer terror.

ELLE: If you went back and did it again, what would you change?

MP: I would have actually blown up the doll.

ELLE: What do women most misunderstand about you?

MP: Boy, this isn’t going to be one of those easy interviews.

ELLE: Sadly, no.

MP: Okay. Women always think that I’m Chandler, so if I don’t joke around for half an hour they think that something’s wrong. Then I explain that I don’t have comedy writers scripting everything I’m saying at this particular dinner.

ELLE: What could a woman say to you that would really hit you at your deepest insecure place?

MP: “Can I borrow $50 million?”

ELLE: Several years after your parents divorced, you moved in with your dad, who famously did Old Spice commercials. Did you ever actually have to compete with him for a woman?

MP: No, but in high school it was a drag to bring cute girls home because of how good-looking he is. He has chiseled features. I do not. He can basically open an envelope with his chin. I cannot.

ELLE: What will you never understand about women?

MP: Nine times out of 10, women don’t want to fix a problem, they just want to be understood. I’ll never get that.

ELLE: Who’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever laid eyes on?

MP: Halle Berry, who I saw at some SAG Awards thing. Of course, if we got married, her name would be Halle Berry-Perry.

ELLE: Did you try that one on her that night?

MP: Oh, no. I was way too nervous to talk to her.

ELLE: What object could you find in a woman’s house that would prove you’re not compatible?

MP: A big Matthew Perry poster on the wall.

ELLE: You’ve said before that you’re picky with women. What are you so picky about?

MP: I need a woman to have a quirky sense of humor. There’s a bunch of jokes I use, and if she doesn’t get them, she’s probably not for me. There’s one joke in particular that I’ll share now, which I hope will eat up some time in this hellish, long, hard interview.

ELLE: I love jokes!

MP: This guy is standing on the streets of New York, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Puppets…puppets…puppets…puppets!” Somebody comes up to him and says, “How’s business going?” and the guy goes, “Business?” If a woman laughs at that, I’ll spend the rest of my life with her.

ELLE: Presumably a lot of women have laughed at it, but still you’re not spending your life with any of them.

MP: Yeah, that’s true too. You caught me. There are other issues.

ELLE: What would you consider the biggest one?

MP: I have a well-documented history of trouble with intimacy.

ELLE: Can you talk more about that?

MP: No.

ELLE: Does your refusal to open up to me about that speak to your trouble with intimacy?

MP: Yeah. There’s a little dose of my problems right there.

ELLE: Is there anyone you’ve dated you’re sorry not to be with now?

MP: Yes, but I won’t disclose who that is. This is a very personal interview. It’s over soon, right?

ELLE: Ah, let’s see. Sorry, you’ve got about half an hour left.

MP: Oh, no.

ELLE: You’re doing great. Do you need to take some deep breaths?

MP: No, let’s just go through them.

ELLE: Dating Julia Roberts. Please provide one surprising detail.

MP: Other than it was 10 years ago and people still ask me about it?

ELLE: Yes, other than that.

MP: How incredibly funny she is. She’s a funny, funny girl.

ELLE: What physical feature are you most self-conscious about?

MP: I have what I like to call a chinneck. My chin just flows rather easily into my neck.

ELLE: Since you stopped drinking, is dating more difficult?

MP: No, it’s easier because you can figure out if you like each other or not. If you’re both drinking, you like each other instantly.

ELLE: When you bring a woman home for the first time, what music do you put on the stereo?

MP: I have insanely dorky taste. Basically, if you’re a woman, and you’re under any kind of emotional duress, and you sing a song, I will listen to it forever. It’s odd being a 37-year-old heterosexual male who owns nothing but Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos. But I’ll go against that at first and play something boring like James Taylor.

ELLE: Bold move, taking the far white route.

MP: That’s me. Far white.

ELLE: Congratulations. I’m finished, and you’ve deflected like a Jedi.

MP: Severe discomfort will give you that talent.

Says fame wasn’t what he expected it to be.

You can understand why people confuse Matthew Perry with his character, Chandler Bing. There’s a heavy dose of Matthew in Chandler: the wiseguy attitude, the nervous energy, the unsinkable sense of humor. But now that he’s saying goodbye to “Friends,” Matthew admits there are times he just wants to chuck his inner good humor man and get, well, real.

Matthew Perry: “I’ve always wanted to go on ‘The Tonight Show,’ and Jay says, ‘So, how you doing?’ And I go, ‘Not good.’ And just like, really just like tell the truth, or like, even extend it… ‘To tell you the truth, Jay, I have no idea which end is up and down in my life anymore.’”

After 10 years of interviews about “Friends,” who could blame Matthew Perry for wanting to shake things up?

Katie Couric: “I would think one of the best things about ending this chapter and saying goodbye to ‘Friends’ is you don’t have to be interviewed by people like me anymore.”

Perry: “Oh, no. In fact, this is the first time you and I have done a one-on-one interview.”

Couric: “That’s true.”

Perry: “So, I’m all a twitter.”

Couric: “Oh, I’m sure you are.”

Do I detect a little sarcasm? On “Friends,” Chandler-speak was a dialect all it’s own, often imitated, but never duplicated.

Couric: “How much, Matthew, are you like Chandler Bing?”

Perry: “It’s a– you know, that, yes.”

Couric: “You’ve never been asked that before, have you?”

Perry: “No, no. And I have the standard joke for it, which is, I look a lot like him.”

Couric: “Oh, that’s good.”

Perry: “That’s what I say to that.”

If it seems Matthew Perry is always going for a laugh, it’s because he’s used to getting them. And has been ever since he was six.

Perry: “You know, when you get your first laugh, like at six years old. And I’m, you know, I pretend to fall down, and people laugh. And just something tingles in your brain. And you’re like, oh, I want more of this. And if there’s any way to get paid doing it, wow. Utopia. You know?”

But his childhood was far from perfect. Matthew, an only child, was born in Massachusetts, then raised in Canada by his single mother, Suzanne.

Couric: “Your parents got divorced when you were quite young– when you were just one.”

Perry: “I was one. Yeah. So, I didn’t blame myself quite yet. But…”

Still, Matthew idolized his father, John Bennett Perry, a working actor who would call his son long-distance when he was a part of some must-see-TV.

Perry: “That was mostly the way that I saw my father when I was young — on TV shows, and you know, getting shot through a door on Mannix, or something like that. That’s my Dad.”

His dad is also the studly sailor in those Old Spice commercials.

Couric: “He’s very attractive, by the way. I noticed the father-son thing in ‘People’s’ sexiest—“

Perry: “You saw the “People” magazine thing? That was one of the best moments I’ve ever had.”

Couric: “Really? Why?”

Perry: “Just because I get to show up to that photo shoot with my father. And he and I really enjoy sharing time. And it’s just so corny. The sexiest father and son?”

Couric: “Well, I have to tell you, your dad is hot.”

Perry: “Okay, I’ve been hearing that my whole life!”

Life before ‘Friends’.
When he was 16, Matthew moved to Hollywood, hoping a little more than the smell of his father’s cologne would rub off on him.

Perry: “I did a pilot called, ‘LAX 2194,’ which was about baggage handlers in the year 2194 at LAX.”

Couric: “Futuristic–now that sounds riveting.”

Perry: “Yeah, and I was wearing a futuristic shirt and sorting out aliens’ luggage. That’s what the show was.”

Couric: “I’m so shocked it wasn’t a hit.”

Perry: “Yeah, well, thank God. Because if it had gotten picked up, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”

Art was about to imitate life. In creating his alter-ego Chandler, Kevin Bright, Marta Kaufman, and David Crane asked Matthew Perry to just be himself.

Perry: “What they did was they took all of us out to lunch separately, and said, tell us about your lives. I mean, we know, you can act. And you’ve got this part. And just, tell us a little bit about yourself.”

And I remember saying two things — Well, I’m not an unattractive man. But I’m just awful with women. And have really bad relationships– relationship problems. And I’m scared to ask people out on dates, you know? That’s the kind of character you haven’t seen before. And I also am not comfortable in any silence at all. At the time–and this is ten years ago. But let me keep talking, so there’s no silence.”

Couric: “Did you tell them you’re a bit of a wiseacre?”

Perry: “Yeah, well, I told them that. But I said, I’m not– I have to break any awkward moment, or any silences, with a joke. And what better character for a sitcom is that? It’s a built in excuse for him to be funny.”

Perry: “I wanted this. And you know, of course it wasn’t what I expected it to be. And that was weird, too. “

Couric: “What’d you expect it to be?”

Perry: “I expected it to just be– you know, that everything was going to be okay now. Because I spent like five years complaining, like, if I just got that job where I could express myself creatively and like all those dramatic talks that you’re saying to women, to try to—“

Couric: “Try to score?”

Perry: “–take them home. And you don’t really mean– no. And then, I got it. And then for about eight months, I was just thrilled. Like I would go to like the Beverly Center and walk around. And like yep.”

Couric: “See if anybody—“

Perry: “Yep. Yep. Yeah, thanks for watching. Like I would—“

Couric: “That’s so sad.”

Perry: “I was really– oh, it’s so sad. It’s awful.”

Battle with inner demons took a toll.
He might have felt comfortable in the white hot spotlight of “Friends,” but by the show’s fifth season, Matthew Perry was feeling more and more uncomfortable in his own skin.

Perry: “You get famous, which is great, and then you kind of realize, no, reality, same issues are coming up. And somebody smart once told me that it was like my fantasies had come true. Not my dreams had come true. And I think that’s what it was.”

But 1997 seemed more like a nightmare. That was the year Matthew Perry checked himself into rehab for addiction to prescription pills, and he continued to battle addiction until 2001. Now at age 34, Perry says he’s clean.

Perry: “You have to get scared enough. That’s the thing. You have to get scared enough to realize — the expression that’s commonly used is like, you have a drink in front of you. And you don’t know what’s going to happen if you finish it. And you don’t know what’s going to happen if you don’t. You know? Like in that moment where you get so scared, that you just ask for help. You know? And it’s tough to do without fully bottoming out, which I was lucky. I kind of health-wise, almost, and spiritually bottomed out. But you know, I didn’t lose everything.”

Couric: “You feel great now.”

Perry: “Yeah. Yeah. I’m a little trepidatious about the future. And you know, what’s in store business-wise, I suppose.”

Couric: “Are you scared?”

Perry: “But see, I chose trepidatious.”

Couric: “Okay, sorry.”

Perry: “I’m trying to sound smart.”

Couric: “I try to use easier, monosyllabic words.”

Perry: “Yeah, see, I even put glasses on for this.”

After “Friends,” you can still expect to see Matthew making occasional cameos on “The West Wing.” This spring he co-stars in “The Whole Ten Yards,” and next year he’ll star in a movie with his dad. Yes, they’re playing father and son. But if Matthew Perry’s still “trepidacious,” here’s why.

Perry: “I’ve had three auditions in the last 10 years, and gotten none of them. So, I’m 0 for three.”

Couric: “Well, I think your resume is a little more impressive now than—”

Perry: “No, but this was during ‘Friends.’ They’re like, no, no thanks. I was just like, but people bring me soup where I work, what do you mean? You’re saying no to me? Nobody says no to me here. People bring me soup.”

With the success of “The Whole Nine Yards,” it was almost inevitable there would be a sequel. And now four years after the original debuted, the sequel, the aptly named “The Whole Ten Yards,” finally hits theaters.
The original cast - including Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, and Natasha Henstridge - reunite for another wild mob comedy ride. This time around, Jimmy ‘The Tulip’ Tudeski (Willis) is living the quiet life, enjoying retirement in sunny Mexico. Jimmy’s days of perfecting his culinary skills are interrupted when Oz (Perry) barges in and begs him to help rescue his kidnapped wife (Henstridge). Hot on Oz’s tail are mob boss Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak) and his gang of hit men, eager to settle an old score now that he’s out of jail on parole.

INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE WILLIS AND MATTHEW PERRY:

Did they get the sequel idea from a press junket for the first movie?
MATTHEW PERRY: I don’t know if it’s the press junket. But the reason we are here doing it again is we all like the ensemble cast, and we all had such a blast doing the movie. Then everybody watched it and it had this great shelf life on DVD and all that stuff. I don’t know that it was the press junket.

What’s the connection between your characters and chickens – “Friends,” “Hudson Hawk?”
MATTHEW PERRY: Chickens are funny.

BRUCE WILLIS: Contractually, every five years, I have to do a film. It’s for the chicken related audience, the poultry industry.

Are you domesticated at home, Bruce?
BRUCE WILLIS: The point is to be kidding. That was Matthew’s idea that we switch roles, and me be this kind of ‘domesticated doesn’t want to kill people anymore’ guy, and Matthew would be the tough guy who had to heroically save the day.

MATTHEW PERRY: One of those worked. We decided early on that me being the heroic guy wasn’t funny, so we dropped that out.

Why?
MATTHEW PERRY: It just wasn’t that funny. One of the great things about the first movie was that I was scared of everything. I was scared of him and I was scared of all that stuff. So in the opening table read, we had the idea of making me kind of this Clint Eastwood guy in the beginning and him being this Martha Stewart kind of person. We had to drop half of that out.

Do you two have similar takes on comedy?
BRUCE WILLIS: I think that we understand timing. For me, I can attribute that to two things. To the sixth, seventh and eighth grade when I was entertaining my class, all through high school actually. And the other thing is from working with TV. When you work on TV every day, your goal is to try to make people laugh and be funny. You become adept at paying attention to where the joke falls. How long to hold a take. It’s an exercise every time and that’s all we do. We just fool around on the set and try to get it to where it just looks natural and sounds natural. It’s like “The Three Stooges,” it really is.

Were you the class clown?
BRUCE WILLIS: If I had my yearbook here, I would show you right now. I was a class clown in 1976.

Who came up with the idea to wear bunny slippers and cook?
BRUCE WILLIS: Well, that was just the start of it. That was all just part of Jimmy’s plan. My character, Jimmy Tudeski, has got this plan that is the most arcane, Byzantine goofball plan that, with a really great script written by George Gallo, also Matthew’s idea, that just all we wanted to do was try to make each other laugh.

Would you ever wear the slippers?
BRUCE WILLIS: Those bunny slippers? I have a pair right now.

How domesticated are you?
BRUCE WILLIS: Quite domesticated. I can cook. I’m tidy.

MATTHEW PERRY: You are tidy. That’s what we should next is “The Odd Couple III.”

BRUCE WILLIS: I’m thinking road pictures. I’m thinking Matthew Perry/Bruce Willis road pictures.

What do you cook?
BRUCE WILLIS: I make lasagna, I make chicken cacciatore. Actually, my chicken cacciatore would make you start crying. It’s so good. The chicken falls off the bone.

How do you stay comic when you’re pointing guns at women seriously?
BRUCE WILLIS: Isn’t that the joke? I was just trying to play a guy that nobody knew what was going on with him, that was capable of anything at any time and it evolved, just like the first film did. We did the first film on our feet the same way every day and in between takes going, “Okay, how about you try this? Why don’t we try this?” There’s a shorthand of comedy that happens because we, first of all, everybody gets along so well. And we did work together on the first film and kind of moved through that one. It’s fun. It’s fun to do it as a job. It’s fun to have a job where you’re just trying to be funny.

What did you learn about comedy from “Friends?”
MATTHEW PERRY: Like Bruce, I was the class clown as well. Lucky we didn’t go to the same school. What I learned from “Friends” was this idea of best joke wins, no matter who thinks of it. If there’s a tyrannical presence, it’s wrong in a comedy world. That’s what’s great about this movie, to get back to the question before. This is kind of a nice place to be, this movie. It’s just a funny place to be while everybody’s shooting at each other. And that’s kind of fun. So, it does scare you and you find yourself laughing at the most crazy, weird things.
Did you cry at the “Friends” finale?
MATTHEW PERRY: I kind of had that feeling of you’re just about to cry for five hours, but Jennifer Aniston’s over there sobbing so you have to go take care of her.

Is this character like Chandler?
MATTHEW PERRY: It’s Chandler times 1000.

How do you keep that fresh?
MATTHEW PERRY: As an actor, on autopilot is the worst thing possible, so you just make sure the script was written by the right person. You make sure you’re surrounded by funny people and then you just literally try to beat the joke. The goal is to have to do the shot again because the camera guy shook a little bit as he was laughing. Without that happening, I’m not happy because there’s nothing better for me than a world that everybody’s just trying to make each other laugh and that everybody’s trying to analyze the funny and trying to make it as good as possible. So I think Chandler grew up through the 10 years. What I love about a character like Oz is there’s no rules. He’s a scared guy and he’s in a set of very scary circumstances. He can do all these physical, really over-the-top kind of things.

Your next movie is a drama with Kevin Pollak. How hard is it to make that transition?
BRUCE WILLIS: It’s not that difficult. It’s just a different set of muscles and a different set of things you think about at your job. But it’s really great to work with people that you’ve already worked with. There’s a shorthand, you know them, you know you can suggest things back and forth and have that creative free flow of information. And Kevin is incredibly funny. We could not do off-camera for him on at least five or six shots. He would say something different every time, and what’s in the film is the funniest stuff, but he would just crack us up every time. We’d be standing off-camera, there was a shot where everybody was trying to do off-camera for one line that he says, “This is reminding me of Sandchildren Through the Hourglass.” No one could stand in there and do off-camera for him. I think he was saying it to Amanda [Peet].

MATTHEW PERRY: I had to run off the set and Amanda ran off the set. Bruce just held up his hand.

BRUCE WILLIS: The camera’s shaking, the camera guy’s laughing, I turned around, I didn’t look at him and held my hand up and said, “Just look at my hand. Say the word to the hand.” And he just killed us every time.

MATTHEW PERRY: Because he was given the opportunity, he was just freer as an actor with all that prosthetic stuff. I want to do that at some point because he told me when you have the prosthetics, the big glasses and stuff, there’s no concern about what you look like. We’re standing there trying to be funny, but going, “I look okay too, right?” He didn’t have to worry about that, so he was a lot freer. And walks away with the movie as a result.

BRUCE WILLIS: I’m so proud, I have to say, I’m so proud of Kevin Pollak. This guy has so many little genius moments in the film that if you watch again, just watch his character all the way through and it cracks you up because these asides and lines that he says that he just said on the day. Just on the day and we’re dying laughing, just going, “Where did that come from?”

By the way, you look great.
BRUCE WILLIS: Thank you. I’ve had some work done [joking]. I’m just in a good place. I’m happy.

You set a tremendous example for divorced couples staying involved for the kids. How hard does that become?
BRUCE WILLIS: It’s not hard at all. That’s the whole point. Demi and I just chose to put our children first and we do it well, and we’re really fortunate.

Do you want to get married again?
BRUCE WILLIS: I want to get married like seven times. I want to be like Mickey Rooney. I’m patterning myself after Mickey.

Would you be the best man at Demi and Ashton Kutcher’s wedding?
BRUCE WILLIS: No, but I saw that article in the “National Enquirer” also and I thought it was a little kooky. I’m the last to know when it comes to stuff like that.

MATTHEW PERRY: This is awkward but I’m going to be the best man.

Bruce, why return to “Die Hard?”
BRUCE WILLIS: Well, we’re talking about it. People wanted to see it. People keep asking me about it and it’s hard. We’re having a contest to come up with the ending.

What sort of ending do you want?
BRUCE WILLIS: I have no idea. What can we do? Have two planets crash into each other? Juggle an asteroid maybe?

[go back]

Fame almost destroyed Friends star Matthew Perry. Now, as he makes his West End stage debut, he tells Neil Norman how he beat his addictions.

Matthew Perry looks great. This is not, I realise, a particularly profound observation but given his history, it is significant. It wasn’t that long ago that Perry looked very far from great. “I was one of those people who thought that fame would bring happiness,” he says. “So if I hadn’t had it, I’d still be chasing it. It’s fortunate that, as a result of doing Friends, I became very famous and I know now that it is not all great.”

One of the consequences of fame is that if you’ve had an interesting history, complete with alcohol and drug-related problems, and have been photographed in various stages of addiction and splashed all over the tabloids, then the preconceptions about where you are at, right here, right now, are set in stone. Sitting opposite Perry in the smart but comfortable confines of the Century Club there is little evidence of his past misdeeds, in either his face or figure. God knows, we’ve seen him fat, we’ve seen him thin. We’Ve seen him bloated with vodka and Vicodin and all manner of incremental vices. This is one 34-year-old who’s been there, done that - and got the hair-shirt.

But in the post-Friends guise of young American actor about to embark on the (now) traditional testing ground of the West End stage, he is the picture of health. Lightly tanned, healthily stubbled, smiling. He smokes cigarettes and drinks coffee - but not in an addict sort of way.
Perry is in rehearsal for the West End revival of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, a sulphurous comedy drama of bad manners and sexual mores among youngish professional types in the Windy city during the Seventies. It’s a bleak and bitter view of heterosexual relationship - a prototype entry in the genre that the film director Neil Labute mined two decades later. It was filmed in 1986 as About Last Night… with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe.

“As a matter of fact, I was a huge fan of that movie when it first came out,” says Perry. “But they really softened it up. It is a very brutal play and it poses the questions but doesn’t necessarily give the answers. If we do our job right, they’ll be standing around talking outside the theatre and missing the train home. In television or a movie I bring my own ego and consequently can mess up. In the theatre I learnt very quickly to shut up and listen. Now I am able to get out of my own way.”

Staying out of his own way is a phrase he repeats in one form or another like a mantra. Sobriety has brought a clarity of thought and self-awareness that necessitates “smashing your ego”. So far it seems to be having a beneficial effect.
Intriguingly, Perry tells me that he had auditioned for the same play two years before Friends. He is not unaware of the irony. “I auditioned for a production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago about 12 years ago for a 35-seat theatre on Melrose in L.A. I didn’T get a call back. And now I get a call in my trailer on a Bruce Willis movie, being offered the lead in the same play.”
He doesn’t have to add: “Go figure”.

Friends, of course, is a phenomenon. The deceptively simple set-up allows for maximum interplay between six characters who are not so much in search of an author (the “Gag Gulag” contains the customarily high number of script writers for US television series) as a meaning to their lives. The group maintains a one-for-all-and-all-for-one policy on the show, which is particularly useful when it comes to negotiating fees - its last egg next January, when the series comes to an end after nearly 10 years. Will he miss it?
“Yes. It’s been my ideal job. You go to work at 9am and get to be funny all day and get paid. There isn’t a jerk in the crew. I had no idea how huge the show was going to be. But it seemed like magic from the very first run-through.”

Perry is not the first - nor will he be the last - to have been caught between the rock of celebrity and the hard place of mucho moolah. But the fact that he managed to survive says much about his strength of character. “It’s actually not a matter of strength,” he says. “Alcoholics and addicts are not the strongest-willed people in town. It’s about having a crossroads in your life and seeing a moment of clarity. It is about surrender rather than strength. I can’t take too much credit for it. It’s like somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Do you want to live or do you want to die?’ I chose to live. I suppose there is a certain own inflated ego. ‘To stay out of you own way’ - that’s a key term for sobriety. It’s like smashing any illusions you have about stars. I mean, going to go back to my “flat” and read my lines and get a frozen dinner and go to sleep. You can’t imagine Paul Newman doing that. We are pedestalised and it serves its purpose. But when you personalise it you become miserable and a jerk because it is not real. And it took a life change for me to see that.”

Fame and money and good looks also bring the inevitable gallery of high-profile girlfriends, Julia Roberts, Heather Graham and Jennifer Capriati are just some of the names with whom he has been linked. He is, he says, aware of the fact that serious friendships have to be earned. And he anticipates becoming a father. “Family? Yeah. I think that’s one of the reasons we’re here. To have kids.”
Meanwhile, he is happily dating a girl called Rachel Dunn who, he is relieved to reveal, is not in the wonderful business called show. “I have a girl in New York. Nobody famous. She called me yesterday with the hockey scores.” He grins hugely, drains the last of his coffee.
“Now, I ask you. What better thing could a girl do?”