October 20, 1999
Matthew Perry on Love, Rehab, Movie Career

This week Friends resident wit Matthew Perry zips from Thursday Must-See TV to Three to Tango, a movie outing - and we do mean outing - in which he falls in love with his boss's mistress (Neve Campbell) but, through the usual comic misunderstandings, must pretend to be gay.

For Perry, the film's silly romantic hijinks are sadly close to the bone. He recalls he spent seven years playing the funnyman all night on every date, with exhausting results. He admits. "It wasn't bringing flowers or anything like that, but going to dinner and trying to impress women with my humor, to the point where my head would almost explode.

"After a few dates, I'm thinking, 'We're in a relationship where she thinks I'm fun and I don't even know her last name.' You run out of things to be funny about."

What's Perry's tactic now? "I've calmed down. I've learned to step off this pedestal I erected. I don't need to give this exaggerated version of myself," he says. Whatever he's done, it worked. For the last nine months he's been with Renee Ashton, an aspiring actress, who Perry says is a "maybe" to guest star on his NBC sitcom.

"We met through the personals," he jokes. "I put an ad in that said: Friends star, Three to Tango star. Nice house. Please help.' I got a couple of thousand letters.

Actually, says Perry, the two met four years ago through a mutual friend. "We started talking and I was flirting with her but I didn't have the nerve to say anything," confesses Perry. "So I was - leaving and decided to go back and say something. I went back but couldn't find her. Then, nine months ago, she came up to me in this restaurant and said, 'I don't know if you remember but we've met.'"

Perry sounds like he's found some much-needed balance in his life after famously entering a rehab clinic for "prescription drug" abuse in 1997. "The big realization is to have a fulfilling life - outside of this [career]. You're going to go crazy if you don't," he now knows. "It's very tempting to have [just] this when you've been successful - but on your time off, you've got to make sure you turn your head off from all this or you'll go insane.

Perry admits he's not eager to discuss his recovery. "I like to be funny in [interviews] and there's nothing funny about [rehab]. You get out and you realize you're no longer there [in the hell of addiction]. It was like [being always] in a dark room and I don't want to go to that dark room again. Now, they can throw anything at me and I'm going to be fine."

Which is exactly how his burgeoning film career looks these days. Last weekend Three to Tango was sneaked nationally, a sign Warner Bros. believes it will generate positive word of mouth. In Tango, which opens Friday, Perry plays an architect who is mistakenly assumed to be gay, a scenario that's already come up for Chandler Bing, the thin, neat, (formerly) single man the actor plays on Friends.

"There was an episode in the first season," Perry says, "where everybody thought Chandler was gay and they ended up doing little jokes throughout the year about it. I did see Tango as a movie version of this in terms of my character."

He isn't worried about crossing any politically incorrect line with the film. "People [on Tango] were careful to make sure no one was offended," he says. "The smartest and most intelligent, grounded character in the movie is a gay guy [played by Oliver Platt]."

Tango got Chastity Bono's input when the GLAAD spokeswoman visited the set. "There's a funny scene where I'm accepting a Professional Gay Man of the Year award and we'd hired big group of extras," Perry recalled. "Chastity came up and said, 'We need a higher class of people in the front.'"

Perry's already wrapped his next film, the black comedy The Whole Nine Yards, in which he's a dorky dentist who lives next door to hitman Bruce Willis. Perry admits, "The first three weeks I was afraid of Bruce. It took a little while. He called me before I accepted the part and left a message on my machine, 'Hey Matthew! Call me back or I'll burn your house down.' It was funny. I called him back, I was pacing all over my house talking to him, and by the end, we were friends. Bruce is a big movie star, not in a bad way, he's just confident." - Stephen Schaefer

Back to the main page

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page