The “Friends” actor has revealed he had an affair with the Oscar winner before she was cast in an episode of the sitcom
Friends star Matthew Perry has revealed how he wooed Julia Roberts with hundreds of fax messages, before dumping her because he feared she would leave him.
Perry, 53, revealed their romance began after the “Pretty Woman” actress was approached to appear on the sitcom in 1995. Producers urged him to contact Roberts after she said she would only accept a guest role if she could be in a storyline with Chandler Bing’s character.
Perry said: “I sent her three dozen red roses and the card said. The only thing more exciting than you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.”
“Julia not only agreed to do the show, but she also sent me lots of bagels as a gift,” he detailed in an interview with The Times
Her agreement to star in an episode of the second series of “Friends” sparked what Perry now describes as a “three-month courtship” via daily faxes while working on a film in France. By the time filming of the episode began, they were no longer a couple.
In his autobiography, “Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing,” Perry reveals that they exchanged hundreds of messages in the days before email was commonplace between them.
“Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine. I was so excited that some nights I would find myself at a party flirting with an attractive woman and I would cut the conversation short so I could run home and see if a new fax had arrived. Nine times out of ten, one would arrive,” the actor continued, referring to his attempt to woo the star.
He and Roberts, who turns 55 this week, eventually embarked on a relationship, but Perry dumped her two months after she appeared on the show.
“Dating Julia Roberts was too much for me. I had always been sure she was going to break up with me. Why wouldn’t she? I wasn’t enough; I could never be enough; I was broken,” he acknowledged. So, rather than face the inevitable agony of losing her, he broke up with Roberts.
“She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and the TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face,” he admitted.
In the book, which will be published on November 1, Perry also reveals his near-death experience with his opioid addiction. And he confessed that five years after splitting from Roberts, he watched her pick up an Oscar for her role in the film “Erin Brockovich” while he was “sweating and shaking” in rehab, surrounded by other patients.
“Those people on TV were no longer my people. No, the people I was lying in front of, shaking, covered in blankets, were my people now,” he explained.
Perry also revealed that he was “in love” with Jennifer Aniston, whom he met through mutual acquaintances three years before they starred in Friends together.
“I was immediately captivated by her and I liked her. And I had a feeling that she was intrigued too, maybe it was going to be something. So I called Jennifer and said, ‘You’re the first person I wanted to say this to. ’ Bad idea. “I could feel the ice through the phone,” she confessed.
“Looking back, it was clear that this made her think I liked her too much or in the wrong way… and I only compounded the mistake by asking her out.”
She declined, but said she would love to be my friend.
