Matthew Perry claims to have divulged some unexpectedly unpleasant feelings towards Keanu Reeves in his new memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Perry, who recently delved into his history with drug addiction, writes, ‘Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?’
Perry, 53, could hardly contain his contempt for the 58-year-old Matrix star — with whom he doesn’t appear to have ever cooperated — while addressing their common buddy River Phoenix, who died of a heroin overdose in 1993 at 23.
Although Reeves has considered Phoenix one of his “closet pals of that era,” Perry also had a deep relationship with the growing actor after making his feature film debut opposite him in 1988’s A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon.
Perry recalls how their experience making the picture in Chicago helped them form a close friendship in his biography while also marking another alleged shot at Reeves.
‘River was a beautiful man inside and out and too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down,’ he writes.
Phoenix died of a heroin and cocaine overdose outside the Viper Room in West Hollywood, and Perry writes that he “heard the screams from my flat; went back to bed; woke up to the news.”
He also stated that he sobbed after learning of his friend’s death.
Perry’s barbs against Reeves were not confined to their shared connection to Phoenix.
In another aside, he slammed the John Wick star while describing his late buddy Chris Farley, who died in 1997 at the age of 33 from a drug overdose caused by mixing a stimulant (cocaine) with a depressive (morphine), a similar mixture to the speedball that killed Phoenix.
Perry and Farley co-starred in the critically panned Christopher Guest-directed comedy Almost Heroes, which was released the year after Farley died.
I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out [about Farley’s death],’ he writes, adding, ‘Keanu Reeves walks among us.’
Aside from his grievances against other performers, Perry discusses his significant experience with drug use in his memoir and recent interviews, which may have made the deaths of Phoenix, Ledger, and Farley all the sadder.
He disclosed to People earlier this month that his colon ruptured due to his opiate addiction when he was 49 years old. Doctors gave him a 2% chance of life, and the medical emergency put him in a coma for two weeks before he spent months in the hospital.
He needed 14 operations to heal all of the abdominal damage, and he admits to going to rehab 15 times in the hopes of quitting his heroin addiction.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry’s memoir, will be released on November 1.