[from Inside TV, 6/99]

Of the ubiquitous Friends cast, Matthew Perry oozes the most talent, sprouts the best one-liners and garners more female fans than his male co-stars.

He's just everyone's favorite - smarter than Joey, more suave than Ross, more successful than Rachel, less neurotic than Monica and much, much wittier than Phoebe. Even castmate Courteney Cox once sang his praise, "Matthew's one of the funniest people I know, genuinely funny."

Not surprising then, that the man behind the sexy and adorable Chandler Bing is all geared up to star opposite Bruce Willis in an upcoming movie and take on a writing role for a new sitcom he has helped create. Together with co-star Jennifer Aniston, Perry has been also listed as one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People this year. His other four cast mates didn't even get a look-in.

This season, looking even better than ever, and romancing Cox's character Monica, Chandler's popularity has soared even beyond that of Rachel's. Chandler's witty one liners have been a welcome antidote to the wearying Ross-Rachel love saga. When he finally sprouted those difficult three words ("I love you") to Monica this season, it was a sign that Chandler had finally grown up. And when he pops the big question in the season's cliffhanger, there is no doubt everyone will be rooting for Monica to say "Yes!". Chandler's not doing too badly for a three-nippled, commitment-shy executive!

That day job on Friends fetches the 30-year-old Perry a paycheck of US$100,000 per episode, a figure that has been growing steadily each time the cast successfully negotiates to stay in one of the hottest shows on television. Friends is already into its fifth season.

As if that's not enough, he has co-created a sitcom, The Shrink, about a neurotic young psychiatrist for which rival network ABC has commissioned a pilot. But Perry is not about to pull the plug on Chandler. Not when the phenomenal success of Friends has afforded him a Porsche, an alleged nose job and a house in the Hollywood Hills.

All has not been sweetness and light. Two seasons ago, it was a different Chandler viewers saw. The gaunt and sick character was only a small-screen personification of what the actor was going through in real life - fighting a claimed painkiller addiction that resulted in his dropping 66kgs.

After a stay at a drug rehabilitation centre, Perry bounced back, proudly proclaiming that difficult period of his life as one of his biggest achievements to date. But not before he urged those who maligned him to stick to the truth - The National Enquirer ran an apology for printing that he was "back again in rehab" just when Perry showed up as an Emmy presenter in the pink of health.

His co-star Salma Hayek in the 1997 romantic comedy Fools Rush In has also been less than polite about him. Apparently, he had driven her up the wall with his caustic humour although Perry himself defended Hayek's calling him "a jerk" as purely a misquote. Hayek's opinion aside, Perry's movie career has sprinted ahead of showmates Matt LeBlanc's and David Schwimmer's. Despite the curse of the Friends cast venturing into the large screen - Schwimmer's The Pallbearer, Leblanc's Lost in Space, Aniston's The Object Of My Affection, plus Perry's own box office flops Fools Rush In (for which he was reportedly paid a cool US$1 million) and Almost Heroes (with the late Chris Farley) - his acting ability has never been in doubt.

His response to comments on the Friends' lack of success in movies? "I thought Courteney being in a movie (Scream) that made $70 million worldwide already would shut everybody up, but I guess it hasn't."

To further prove the critics wrong, Perry's upcoming movie partners are getting bigger - Three To Tango with Scream's Neve Campbell and his biggest star collaboration yet with Bruce Willis in The Whole Nine Yards, a black comedy with him as a financially struggling suburbanite who decides to cash in on his informer neighbour (Willis).

To think that things might have turned out differently for the then promising teenaged tennis player! His first appearance on Scott Baio's sitcom Charles In Charge at 14 was followed by a bit part two years later in A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon, a movie starring River Phoenix.

Son of an actor father and press secretary mother who divorced when he was a toddler, his dad John Bennet Perry - who played his dad in Fools Rush In - had to strike a deal with the younger Perry that he would have to land an acting job within a year or horrors... enroll at the University of Southern California.

Determined, Perry found work in a whole bunch of television shows, ranging from lead parts (Second Chance, Boys Will Be Boys) to guest-starring roles (Who's The Boss?, Silver Spoons, Highway To Heaven). Then, by some strange coincidence, he pitched the idea of a sitcom on six coffee-drinking friends to NBC who'd already conceived a similar plot with Friends. But since he'd come along, they asked him to star instead. The rest, as they say, is post-Friends.

Like his professional success, his love life is as Tinseltown as they come. Although he is not dating anyone in particular, it is still a far cry from his younger days. He has described himself and his pals as "the guys who made you laugh but didn't get any dates."

He has been romantically linked to Baywatch babe Yasmine Bleeth and Pretty Woman Julia Roberts (who guest-starred in Friends as Chandler's beauty specialist childhood chum). In between, Perry has been rumoured to have set aflutter the hearts of stars as diverse as Elizabeth Hurley and Shannon Doherty.

Co-star Lisa Kudrow once put is down to his best asset: "It's his eyes. They're so blue." On the absence of a permanent partner, Perry has remarked, "I have no time for a social life. And if I go on a date with somebody, it ends up in a newspaper. That's annoying."

We hear you Perry, but for the record, some guys would find that a very small annoyance!