Less than a week after Friends star Matthew Perry was found dead at his Los Angeles home, he was laid to rest in a private ceremony just steps from the studio where he spent his most iconic years.
Perry (who was 54 at the time of his death) was remembered Friday at a service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, multiple outlets report. His former Friends castmates, including Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer, were in attendance, E! reports, as were his father, actor John Bennett Perry, and his stepfather, Dateline host Keith Morrison.
The family members at the ceremony included Perry’s mother, Suzanne, and brother, Willy Morrison, as well as sisters Emily and Madeline, Page Six reports. The outlet also notes that the cemetery, located near the Hollywood Hills, “is opposite the Warner Bros studios, where Perry filmed [Friends] for ten years.” It’s also the final resting place of stars including Lucille Ball, John Ritter, and Carrie Fisher.
The service ran from 3-5 p.m. Friday, People reports, and was not open to the public.
That same day, the National Philanthropic Trust announced a foundation in Perry’s name that will support people with substance use disorder, CNN reports. Called the Matthew Perry Foundation, the organization is “in the spirit of Matthew Perry’s enduring commitment to helping others struggling with the disease of addiction,” it said via press release.
The effort is “guided by his own words and experiences, and driven by his passion for making a difference in as many lives as possible,” the group said. Perry, whose 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing offered a stark discussion of his own substance use disorder, said he wrote the book to help others living with the same illness.
“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life and a lot of wonderful accolades,” Perry told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. “But the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic comes up to me and says, ‘Will you help me stop drinking?’ I will say, ‘Yes. I know how to do that.’”
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