Matthew Perry was in love with Julia Roberts, dated the actress and died on her birthday

Sad coincidence. Matthew Perry died this Saturday (28) on the day that Julia Roberts, his ex-girlfriend — and one of the great loves of his life — turned 56 years old. He tells details of the beginning, middle and end of his relationship with the actress, in the mid-1990s, in his book “Friends, Loves and That Terrible Thing”.

It was like this: Roberts received an invitation to make a cameo in “Friends”. She expressed interest, as long as she appeared in the core of Chandler, Perry’s character, but nothing was finalized. So, at the suggestion of series creator Marta Kauffman, Perry sent Roberts dozens of roses and a card to try to convince her to accept the role.

“Thus began a three-month flirtation in daily fax exchanges. This in a pre-internet, pre-cell phone era, all our exchanges were done by fax. And there were many; hundreds”, wrote Perry, who in another excerpt recalls: “Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly reveal her next message.”

It wasn’t long before the faxes, which had become romantic, turned into “five-hour” phone conversations, before the two even met in person. This happened when Julia went to his house. “When I opened the door, there she was: Julia Roberts, smiling, on the other side,” she said.

The two started dating and were therefore together when Roberts appeared in the episode “The One After the Super Bowl”, in the second season of the series, aired in 1996. “Our kiss on the couch was so real that people thought it was real. It really was,” he wrote.

Matthew describes throughout the book his passion for Julia and his enchantment with her, at the same time as he dealt with his addiction to alcohol and drugs. She thought she was “not enough” for the actress. “Dating Julia Roberts was too much for me. I was always sure she would break up with me. Why wouldn’t she?” Anguished and insecure, he ended the relationship himself, an attitude that left her confused.

Perry also says that, in 2000, she was in rehab when Roberts won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in “Erin Brockovich: A Woman of Talent.” “I was so happy for her. What about me? I just felt more grateful that I had survived another day. When you hit rock bottom, the days take a while to pass. I didn’t need another Oscar; I just needed another day”, he recalled.