Matthew Perry Net Worth: He Would’ve ‘Traded’ Fame & Fortune to Not Face Addiction
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He’ll always be remembered. Matthew Perry’s net worth reflects his 10 seasons on Friends and almost four decades as one Hollywood’s funniest best friends. Perry, whose full name is Matthew Langford Perry, was born on August 19, 1969 in Williamston, Massachusetts.
He started acting when he was 15 years old and went on to take improvisational comedy classes in high school. His television debut came in 1979 when he had a small part as a child actor in the ABC drama 240-Robert. He went on to star in shows like Beverly Hills, 90210 and Growing Pains before his big break as Chandler Bing in NBC’s comedy Friends.
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Perry—who was the youngest cast member on Friends, joining the series at the age of 24 years old—starred on the series for 10 seasons and 10 years. The show—which also starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer as a group of friends in New York City—also led Perry to an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series category in 2002. It also led to him to star in movies like The Whole Nine Yards and Fools Rush In, as well as guest appearances in shows like Ally McBeal and The West Wing, which earned him two Emmy nominations in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2003 and 2004.
After more than four decades in Hollywood, Perry died at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on October 28, 2023. He was 54 years old. Perry was pronounced dead by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department after he was found unresponsive in his hot tub. “The cast is reeling from the loss of their brother, because that’s what Matty was — their brother,” a source told Page Six at the time of the Friends cast’s reaction to Perry’s death. “It’s just devastating.”
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Still, Perry’s legacy, including his 10 seasons on Friends, lives on. Read on for what to know about Matthew Perry’s net worth and how much he made on Friends and other projects.
1. What was Matthew Perry’s Friends salary?
What was Matthew Perry’s Friends salary? The Friends— which included Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer—made $1 million per episode for Seasons 9 and 10. Season 9 had 24 episodes, while Season 10 had 17 episodes, which meant that the cast made $41 million each for the last two seasons of the series. According to Parade, the Friends cast also makes $20 million per year each in residuals from the series.
“Were we worth $1 million? To me, that’s such a strange question,” LeBlanc told The Huffington Post in 2015. “It’s like, well, that’s irrelevant. Are you worth it? How do you put a price on how funny something is? We were in a position to get it. If you’re in a position in any job, no matter what the job is—if you’re driving a milk truck or installing TVs or an upholsterer for a couch—if you’re in a position to get a raise and you don’t get it, you’re stupid. You know what I mean? We were in a position and we were able to pull it off. ‘Worth it’ has nothing to do with it.”
However, the Friends cast didn’t always make that much. According to a 1996 report by The New York Times, the Friends cast made around $20,000 per episode for Seasons 1 and 2 of the series, though the newspaper reported that some cast members’ salaries were “considerably higher.” According to Parade, those cast members were Schwimmer and Aniston, who made $40,000 per episode due to their characters’ Ross Geller and Rachel Green’s romance being a main storyline on the show.
Though the Friends cast demanded for their salaries to increase to $100,000 per episode each, as well as a percentage of the series’ profits in syndication, for Season 3 according to The New York Times, Parade reported that the cast landed on a deal for $75,000 per episode, which paid each of them $1.875 million for Season 3. The cast received another raise for $85,000 per episode for Season 4, which paid them each $2.125 million for the season. In Season 5, the Friends cast made $100,000 per episode, which resulted in $2.4 million each for the season. Season 6 paid them $125,000 per episode, which netted to $3.125 million for the season. The cast received a significant raise for Season 7 and 8 to $750,000 per episode, which equaled to $36 million each for both seasons.
In his 2022 book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry recalled Schwimmer trying to negotiate more pay for him and the rest of the cast during Season 1 of Friends. “During that first year — David’s year — he showed up one day at my dressing room,” Perry wrote. “He had brought an original hangdog expression to his character and was just damn funny. He was also the first one of us to shoot a commercial, be on The Tonight Show, buy a house, get his own movie. He was the hot guy that first year, and rightly so. He had been hilarious.”
Perry claimed that Schwimmer told him, “When we renegotiate our contracts, we should do it as a team. We should all get paid the same amount.” Perry continued, “He was by far the one in the best position to negotiate. I could not believe what he was saying. Needless to say, I was thrilled. I was perfectly happy to take advantage of his generosity of spirit.” Perry credited Scwhimmer for getting the cast its $1-million-per-episode deal for the last two seasons of Friends. “It was a decision that proved to be extremely lucrative down the line,” Perry wrote.
2. What was Matthew Perry’s Friends reunion salary?
What was Matthew Perry’s Friends reunion salary? The Friends cast—which included Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc—reunited for a reunion for HBO Max (now known as Max) in 2021. Each cast member made $2.5 million for the special, according to Variety. The Wall Street Journal reported that the cast was initially offered $1 million each for the special, but they negotiated up to $2.5 million.
3. What was Matthew Perry’s net worth?
What was Matthew Perry’s net worth? Matthew Perry’s net worth was $120 million at the time of his death, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Along with his salary from Friends, Matthew Perry’s net worth also included what he made from TV shows and movies like Ally McBeal, The West Wing, The Ron Clark Story, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
In an interview with People in 2022, Perry revealed that he would’ve traded his fame and fortune to avoid his struggle with addiction. “The fact that I would trade it all to not have this disease is true,” he said. “But I don’t belittle how fun the experience has been on Friends. And the money was amazing. Just the creative experience of being on the show probably saved my life.”
He continued, “When you’re making a million dollars a week, you can’t drink the 37th drink. You have to go home and go to sleep.… That was the greatest job in the world.”
He also told People about why he didn’t write a memoir about his struggles until 2022. “I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” he said. “I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober — and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction — to write it all down. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people.”
In his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry revealed that he almost died at the age of 49 after he suffered from gastrointestinal perforation, which was caused by his colon bursting from opioid overuse. He spent two weeks in a coma and five months in a hospital and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months. “The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” he told People. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
Perry revealed that his struggle with alcohol addiction started when he was first cast on Friends at the age of 24. “I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” he said. “But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.’”
At one point in his life, Perry was taking 55 Vicodin a day and weighed just 128 pounds. “I didn’t know how to stop,” he said. “If the police came over to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’re going to take you to jail,’ I’d start packing. I couldn’t stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older.”
Perry told that he’d been to rehab 15 times in his life. “I’m pretty healthy now,” he said at the time, “I’ve got to not go to the gym much more, because I don’t want to only be able to play superheroes. But no, I’m a pretty healthy guy right now.”
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing’ by Matthew Perry
For more about Matthew Perry, read his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The New York Times bestseller takes readers through Perry’s life and career, from his childhood dreams of becoming an actor to how he was cast in Friends to his struggle with addiction and his stints in rehab. “Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead,” Perry writes in the book. Told in his own words for the first time ever, the memoir is an “unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny” account of Perry’s trials and triumphs. Described as an “unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening,” Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is a must-read for Friends fans.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, help is available. Call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for free, confidential support.
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