Featured Image Credit: J. Vespa/WireImage/Getty / David Klein/Getty Images
Topics: Celebrity, Matthew Perry, The Simpsons, Friends
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Celebrity, Matthew Perry, The Simpsons, Friends
Hank Azaria has paid a moving tribute to Matthew Perry.
News broke over the weekend that Perry had died at his home in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 28, at the age of 54.
The Friends star's cause of death is yet to be determined.
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In the wake of his untimely passing, dozens of famous faces have paid tribute to Perry; from Gwyneth Paltrow, to his Friends co-star Maggie Wheeler.
And now The Simpsons star Hank Azaria had paid tribute to his 'brother' Perry, and credited him for helping him get sober.
"Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles," he began his tribute video posted to Instagram.
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"When I moved there I was 21, he was 16. We did a pilot together called Morning Maggie.
"It never saw the light of day but Matthew and I became really good friends.
"We were really more like brothers for a long time."
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Azaria went on: "We drank a lot together, we laughed a lot together, we were there for each other in the early days of our career.
"To me, as funny as he was on Friends (and other things too), in person he was just the funniest man ever.
"He lived to laugh."
Further on in the lengthy video, Azaria discussed his sobriety journey and credited Perry for helping him.
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"I'm a sober guy for 17 years and I want to say that the night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in," the Night At The Museum actor recalled.
"The whole first year I was sober we went to meetings together, and he was just a great- I got to tell him this...
"As a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise and he totally helped me get sober."
"I really wish he could have found it in himself to stay with the sober live more consistently," Azaria added.
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Perry was very open about his addiction battles over his lifetime, and shared a lot about it in his 2022 memoir.
At one stage of his struggles, the actor was given just a two percent chance of living.
At the age of 49, doctors discovered that Perry had suffered from a gastrointestinal perforation as a result of his opioid use, which led to him spending two weeks in a coma and five months in a hospital while using a colostomy bag.
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In his book he explained that 'the doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance to live,' adding: "I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that's called a Hail Mary. No one survives that."