[from People, 9/95]

Matthew Perry can smell blood. "That's choking!" he shouts

across a Los Angeles paddle-tennis court, then fires off a shot

that narrowly misses the head of his opponent, actor Patrick Van

Horn. Perry flashes a smile. "I'm trying to kill them," he says.

Before he can, the ball comes rocketing back at him. "I dedicate

this one to all the little people," he heroically proclaims as

he whacks the ball into the net. Not only does he lose the

point, he falls flat on his butt.

"See what your boasting brings you?" taunts Van Horn.

Perry, undaunted, jumps to his feet. "No let up!" he tells his

partner, actor-writer Andrew Hill Newman, who rises to the rally

cry with a wicked passing shot straight down the line. "Good

shot!" shouts Perry. "You are allowed to sweat now."

A moment later, though, Newman swings and misses--and the match

is lost. "Uh-oh," says Newman, glancing over at a glum Perry.

"Now he'll be the Most Serious Man Alive."

And for a good 30 seconds, Perry is. Then, with a good-natured

grumble, the 26-year-old actor hands over the $5 he has wagered

and is back cracking wise again. It is, in fact, very hard for

Perry to stay miserable right now. After all, in the 18 months

since he auditioned for the NBC sitcom Friends, just about

everything in Perry's life has been golden. The quirky show

about twentysomethings who puzzle out life over bottomless cups

of gourmet coffee was last year's breakout sitcom, the

top-ranked show for most of the summer and the most unabashedly

imitated comedy of the current season. Perry and his five fellow

Friends stars are now living every actor's dream of unbridled

success.

"I've seen women lie down on the street and get naked in front

of him," teases Newman, who has been a close friend of Perry's

since they met at a poker game four years ago. Okay, not naked.

But sometimes female fans do plop down at his restaurant table

as if they were old pals. What does Perry do in the face of such

attention? Often blushes, runs for cover and, the next day,

turns the experience into a self-effacing line he can use on the

show as his alter ego, Chandler. Friends co-executive producer

Marta Kauffman says Perry often makes sharp script additions:

"We've discovered his incredible depth. He's not just a funny

guy."

"People assume he's just a funny guy," ventures costar Jennifer

Aniston, who has been pals with Perry since they met at a party

five years ago. "But he's also very sensitive. He's just a good

guy, not a guy guy."

Consider how Perry spent his summer vacation--his first break

since becoming one of the hottest properties on network TV. Did

he hang in the fashionable Hamptons? Hardly. Belly up to the bar

at the Viper Room? No. Instead, he took two extended trips to

see both sets of his grandparents, one in Ottawa, the other in

Williamstown, Mass. "He genuinely cares about how we are all

doing," says his father, John.

Perry's Friends costars could--and do--say the same thing. "He

is," says Matt LeBlanc, "a sweetheart."

And this would be--what?--a compliment? Whatever he is (and fear

not, we will return to this guy-guy business), Perry is an actor

whose years in the industry--including a stint as Tracey Gold's

boyfriend on Growing Pains and a string of sitcom flops--have

taught him to be grateful. "I'd say 88 percent of it is great,"

he says of his newfound fame, "and 12 percent is a little

scary." And even the scary part--say, this sudden public

interest in his life--is not, he says, all that bad. "The

attention is gratifying," says Perry, "and part of what we're in

this business for. The good thing is--and I know it sounds trite--

I get to get up at 9 a.m. and drive to an unbelievably

wonderful place to work."

It doesn't hurt that he gets to do his driving in a brand-new

black Porsche 911. Or that he gets to play tennis with John

McEnroe and street hockey with Wayne Gretzky at celebrity

charity events. Back in June, Perry got an even more precious

perk: the chance to hit a ball into the stands of the Toronto

SkyDome when he was in town visiting his mother. Okay, the Blue

Jays weren't in town that day, so the place was deserted--and,

yes, he fudged things a bit by standing at second base to take

his cuts, but hey, a dinger's a dinger. Perry watched in

absolute ecstasy as the ball flew over the fence, then told his

mother, whom he'd brought along to witness the feat, "You can

just kill me now."

In fact, Perry is living life to the hilt in his fashion. In

June he bought a three-bedroom Hollywood Hills spread complete

with 40-inch-screen TV in the living room and a Foosball table

in the center of the dining room. One of his few pieces of

furniture is a magazine rack, which currently holds a biography

of Mickey Mantle and a Big Bird coloring book. The refrigerator

is stocked with Gatorade and raspberry yogurt, the garbage can

filled with fast-food wrappers. Says Aniston of her pal's

never-left-the-dorm decor: "He's a child in a man's body."

Perry swears that he hasn't changed much in any way. "A few

years ago my friends and I were so uncomfortable going up to

women in bars," he says, "that we came up with this idea where

we'd pay each other $20 to go up to someone and say anything."

Perry's icebreaker: "Hi, I'm completely filled with fruit and

cheese." No, it didn't work. Today, when he can sit back and let

the women do the approaching, he remains something less than a

smooth operator. "Nine times out of 10," he says, "I'll mess it

up anyway."

Certainly, he has the genes to be a true charmer. Perry is the

only child of Suzanne and John Perry, who were divorced when he

was less than a year old. Perry got his rugged good looks from

his father, a Los Angeles actor best known for Old Spice

commercials. As for his glibness, Matthew got that from his

mother, a former Canadian TV anchor and onetime press secretary

for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. "He was always quick and

funny," says John of his son. And used the talent to good

advantage. "I didn't get very good grades," says Perry, "but the

teachers let me pass because they thought I was funny." Says

Suzanne of Matthew's antics: "He was preparing his shtick."

He was also working on his backhand. After his parents divorced,

Perry moved with his mother from Williamstown, where his

father's family lived, to Ottawa, his mother's hometown.

Encouraged by his grandfather, Perry took up tennis. At 4, he

began hitting balls at the local country club-and never stopped.

Says Perry: "I spent my summers playing tennis with 60-year-old

men."

There were young women around too. "When he was 13 he developed

quite a crush on a girl," says Suzanne. "They had a very intense

relationship." Perry and his girlfriend talked endlessly on the

phone and spent hours together. Then, one afternoon, Perry left

his girlfriend in one room, found his mother in another and

blurted out a confession: "One minute I looked over at her and I

liked her. The next minute I looked over at her and I didn't."

What could a mother say? "Matthew," Suzanne offered, "this is

the beginning of a long career."

Wisely, perhaps, Perry concentrated on other interests: tennis

and acting. The No. 2-ranked junior player in Ottawa at 13, the

otherwise gentle-tempered Perry was, he says, intensely

competitive and rarely accepted defeat gracefully. "I was a

moron," says Perry, "throwing my racket and getting angry." In

the theatre, luckily, the explosions were only make-believe. In

seventh grade he played a gunslinger named Arriba Arriba Geneva

in his Ashbury College production of a play called The Life and

Death of Sneaky Fitch-and was hooked. "When I got my first laugh

onstage," says Perry, "I said, 'Whoa! I really like this.' "

His mother married Canadian anchorman Keith Morrison when Perry

was 10 and proceeded to have four more children: Caitlin, now

14, Emily, 10, Willy, 8, and Madeline, 6. Though Perry was close

to them, at 15 he decided to head to L.A. to test his skills

both on court and onstage-and to get to know his father better.

"I didn't get much of a chance to see him as a kid," says Perry.

"He'd call up and say, 'I'm getting killed on Mannix this

Thursday. Look for me.' " Perry moved in with his father, John's

second wife, Debbie, and their daughter Marie, now 13, and

prepared for his first big U.S. tennis match.

"My family came out to watch me, and I got killed," recalls

Perry. "After that there was no question of a tennis career. I

knew I wasn't good enough."

And so he settled on acting. His father remembers watching

Matthew's 1985 Buckley School debut as George Gibbs in Our Town

with mixed emotions. "I thought, 'We've got a problem here,' "

says John. " 'He's good. There's another generation shot to

hell!' "

A waitress in a San Fernando Valley restaurant gave her

16-year-old customer his first big break--in the form of a napkin

with a note written on it by a director who had spotted Perry

while dining. "He thought I'd be perfect for his next movie,"

says Perry. "I thought 'Yeah, it'll be shot in the back of his

van and called On Golden Blond."

Perry auditioned anyway and won a small role in the 1988 River

Phoenix film A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. Other bit

parts came his way, including one in 1988's Dance Till Dawn, in

which he played Christina Applegate's dud prom date.

Frustrated by the lack of good parts, Perry and his friend

Newman decided to write their own sitcom in 1993. The result,

which they called Maxwell's House, revolved around the travails

of twentysomething friends. It was good enough to interest NBC.

"Suddenly I was wearing a suit and going to meetings," says

Perry. "It was fun." Less fun was the discovery that NBC already

had a similar sitcom in the works. In the end, says Perry, NBC

canned Maxwell's House for Friends. If you can't beat 'em, he

concluded, audition. "My God!" thought Perry, who got a chance

to see the script through auditioning friends. "Their writers

did a better job than I did. "

Perry read for the show's producers on a Wednesday in 1994, for

the production company on Thursday, for the network on Friday.

And on Monday morning he was on the set working.

The friends he has made on the job, says Perry, are keepers;

they hang out together and give each other counsel. "He really

helped me when I was going through a relationship problem a year

ago," says Aniston. "He's a great listener." Adds Lisa Kudrow:

"He's just somebody you want to be around." His family agrees.

"His little brothers and sisters worship him," says his mother.

And he them. "He always comes to Marie's track meets and

basketball games," says John.

As he embarks on the beginning of the show's second season,

Perry has high hopes for the future--and he's not talking

ratings. "I've said jokingly that the romantic area of my life

is pathetic," he says. "But it's really not. I just haven't put

that much effort into dating." His mother is all for his plan to

step up the effort--though a match may not come easy. "He's got a

serious side when it comes to women," she says. His pals

disagree. Matt? Serious? No way. "But he is a very good kisser,"

jokes Newman. "I would put Good Kisser right after Pays for

Everything on the list of reasons we like him." Friends producer

Kauffman has a reason of her own. "He is," she says, "the Cutest

Man Alive."