After a stormy four-year battle with addiction, the sun is finally shining on Friends star Matthew Perry.

Matthew Perry says his life is so good now, he’s afraid he’ll forget the bad times and wind up repeating them. That would seem nearly impossible, because the bad times were truly horrific. The 33-year-old Friends star says his problems began when he became hooked on the prescription painkiller Vicodin after a 1997 jet ski accident. A four-year battle with drugs and alcohol ensued. Perry landed in rehab twice, was hospitalized with an alcohol-induced disease of the pancreas, and crashed his Porsche into a house. Perry’s latest trip to rehab temporarily shut down the filming of his current movie, Serving Sara. After two and a half months of treatment, Perry finished the movie. He says he’s been sober ever since. Now, Perry is obsessed with improving his tennis game he was a ranked junior tennis player in his youth, trains daily with a professional coach, and he’s rumored to be dating tennis ace Jennifer Capriati and he’s planning for his life after Friends. This season, for which Perry is pulling down a cool $24 million, is expected to be the series’ last. Upfront’s Jenny Peters caught up with Perry last month and chatted with him about all of it.

UPFRONT: What are you up to these days?

PERRY: I have promised myself to become the best tennis player that I can become, and I am on my way to doing that.

UPFRONT: Are you getting any pro tips from Jennifer?

PERRY: Yeah. Jennifer Capriati is a friend of mine but we are not getting married or whatever the theory is this week. We talk about tennis. We both love tennis.

UPFRONT: What is it like to play with her? Can you win a game?

PERRY: No. I can hit with her. We can have rallies together and stuff, but as soon as we play a set she just kills me. I prefer her to be my mixed doubles partner. The other day we played against Serena Williams and Rick Fox and we won.

UPFRONT: Does she give you a few points when you play singles?

PERRY: She just wipes the floor with me.

UPFRONT: You’re still fairly close to your battle with drugs and alcohol. Do you feel stronger as a result of rehab and everything you’ve been through?

PERRY: Yeah, it is an amazing feeling. Having gotten through that and continuing to work to get through it is very empowering. When you spend your life on a day-to-day basis facing your fears and trying to figure why you are living life in a way that is harmful to you, you can’t help but come out the other end feeling stronger.

UPFRONT: Is what happened to you the price of fame?

PERRY: I think fame intensifies the problem. Part of the solution to the problem is realizing that you are just like a regular guy and if you think that you are more important or bigger than life, it is a hindrance to solving the problem. If everybody has got a big light on you, you have to realize that that it is like ether. It is not real. That light is going to be turned off and you are still going to be the guy standing there.

UPFRONT: So how are you going to deal with it moving forward?

PERRY: It is a lifelong thing. It is a disease that you have and [the treatment] is a maintenance program. The key is to not forget how bad it was. I am walking around in my days right now pretty joyful, pretty happy, and having a really good time in my life, so it would be kind of easy to forget how bad things got. That is the danger.

UPFRONT: How bad did it get? When did you know that you really had to get help?

PERRY: The night before I had to leave the movie. It got bad enough that I was scared for my survival.

UPFRONT: Would you say this has been the toughest struggle of your life?

PERRY: Oh yeah, without question.

UPFRONT: Do you have any advice to people out there who have drug or alcohol problems?

PERRY: You know, the one cool thing about not doing this anonymously is that I do get the sense that I can kind of help people just by showing up and doing my job. I thought that I needed [drugs and alcohol] in my life to be happy or to have fun, and the truth of the matter is that is just is not the case. I have been sober for a little over a year-and-a-half, and it has been the most amazing year and a half. The day-to-day process of my life is pretty off-the-charts great.

UPFRONT: Well, that amazingly cool BMW convertible you drive is definitely great. Can you tool around in that car in L.A. and not get accosted at stop lights?

PERRY: It is the one little luxury I allow myself to have. I don’t care that people can see me; I just love driving that car so much. But I also have a hide-me kind of car, too.

UPFRONT: Do people honk and yell when they do see you?

PERRY: They honk because I am on this show that I am in everybody’s living room each week. It is different than maybe some of the guys who just do features because there is this feeling that they know me. It is almost like at a red light I am picking up this conversation that is still occurring with someone that I don’t know. I just jump into their lives, so it is surreal. Sometimes it is fun. Sometimes you wish you had a machine so you could just turn it off.

UPFRONT: What about with girls? When you get to be so well known, can you just be a guy and take a girl out on a date?

PERRY: No, you can’t go on a blind date ever again, so that is over. I think I am pretty good at that radar of somebody who is just out with me because I am on a show. But if the girl is hot enough I don’t care why she is out with me [laughing].

UPFRONT: Is this really the last year of Friends?

PERRY: Yes, I believe it is the last year. But never say never. Friends: the Movie will never happen, I promise.

UPFRONT: Jennifer Aniston said there will never be A Very Friends Christmas either.

PERRY: I don’t think so. But maybe if all of our careers hit the skids in like 20 years, we will show up.

UPFRONT: Are you going to miss Chandler?

PERRY: Of course. I got this show when I was 24 and I will be 33 when I leave. Those are pretty important years there. I don’t like to think about it too much, but those last few weeks are going to be really hard. You like to think that if a door closes in your life another door opens somewhere and your job is to find it.

UPFRONT: How would you like to see Chandler go out?

PERRY: You know, Chandler is probably the guy who has grown up the most on the show. He started out as this absolute neurotic freak boy and now he is married. I think it would be really nice if Monica’s last line to Chandler was something like “I am pregnant” or something like that.

UPFRONT: What’s next for you?

PERRY: First we’re going to do the sequel to The Whole Nine Yards. After that the lovely people at Paramount who did Serving Sara have been kind enough, based on that film, to offer me a couple more movies. Hopefully, the next one up will be this drama called One of Us that I just love. There is not a joke to be found in it, so that will be a great challenge. I hope I am up to the task.