The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office has listed actor Matthew Perry’s cause of death as “deferred,” as his autopsy results are pending a toxicology report.
The cherished actor was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his residence in the affluent Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles shortly after 4 p.m. on Oct. 28, according to tabloid news outlet TMZ, which first broke the story.
Unnamed police sources cited by the outlet said emergency services were called to the scene following an initial report of a cardiac arrest. A 15-second recording of the moment first responders were sent to the scene had been obtained by TMZ, and referenced an apparent drowning.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division is handling the investigation into Mr. Perry’s death. The agency said no drugs were found at the location, and that there had been no indication of foul play.
Asked about the circumstances of Mr. Perry’s death, Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Erik Scott said—without referring to Mr. Perry by name—that firefighters called to an address in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood found “an adult male unconscious in a stand-alone jacuzzi.”
“A bystander had brought the man’s head above the water and gotten him to the edge, then firefighters removed him from the water upon their arrival,” Mr. Scott said, adding that a medical assessment at the scene had revealed that “the man was deceased” before emergency personnel arrived.
Social Media Flooded With Tributes
The news brought an outpouring of grief from fellow celebrities, other high-profile personalities, and Mr. Perry’s legions of fans.Born in Massachusetts on Aug. 19, 1969, Mr. Perry grew up in Ottawa, Canada. His mother, Suzanne Morrison, a former Canadian journalist, worked for then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau—Justin Trudeau’s father—as a press secretary.
The American-Canadian actor was 24 years old when he began portraying the sardonically wry statistical analyst Chandler Bing on “Friends,” which ran for a total of 10 seasons from 1994 and ranked among the top 10 prime-time television shows for much of its original network run.
The series featured Mr. Perry alongside co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer, and made global stars out of Mr. Perry and all five of his lead castmates.
The six earned widespread critical acclaim for their on-screen chemistry, playing a close-knit group of young singles who spent time in each other’s apartments and hung out together at the “Central Perk,” a fictional Manhattan coffee house.
Following “Friends,” Mr. Perry went on to star in three further, though shorter-lived, network television ventures—“Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” “Mr. Sunshine” and “Go On.”
Addiction Struggles
Mr. Perry’s death came one year after he published his memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” which outlined the actor’s decades-long struggle with addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol. He had been clean since May 2021.“My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead,” he wrote in the opening line of his memoir. Mr. Perry told People Magazine in Oct. 2022 that he wrote the book to help others struggling with addiction.
“I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” he said. “I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober—and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction—to write it all down. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people,” he said.
