Matthew Perry shared shocking moment his heart stopped for five minutes in resurfaced clip
Topics: Matthew Perry, Friends, Celebrity, Film and TV, Health
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/CBS
Topics: Matthew Perry, Friends, Celebrity, Film and TV, Health
Footage which has resurfaced after Matthew Perry's death shows the moment he recalled legally dying for five minutes as his heart stopped beating.
The Friends actor reflected on many of his life experiences during a series of interviews last year as he promoted his memoir, Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing.
In his book, Perry spoke openly about how he was lucky to be alive in his 50s after years of heavy substance abuse which led to serious medical issues.
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In an interview with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Perry explained how one medical scare caused him to drop out of Netflix's apocalyptic black comedy Don't Look Up, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
Perry wrote in his memoir that securing the role would have been the 'biggest movie [he’d] gotten ever', but he was forced to drop out after what happened to him at a treatment center in Switzerland.
While there, Perry told his doctors he had stomach pain and was scheduled for an operation.
In the operating room, Perry was administered propofol, which is regularly used for anesthesia, but the actor's heart was stopped as a result.
"Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn’t a heart attack - I didn’t flatline - but nothing had been beating," he wrote in his memoir.
"I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn’t want the guy from Friends dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest.
"If I hadn’t been on Friends, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?"
Perry further recalled the incident in his interview with Colbert, saying the person administering the life-saving CPR broke eight of his ribs in the process.
He said he had no memories from the period when his heart stopped beating, and instead just recalled waking up in a different hospital, 10 hours later.
As a result of the emergency, Perry had to give up the 'amazing' opportunity to appear in Don't Look Up, where he would have appeared as a Republican journalist and shot four scenes with Meryl Streep.
Less than five years after his scare at the facility in Switzerland, Perry passed away at his home in Los Angeles on 28 October.
The actor was found unconscious in his hot tub. Law enforcement sources have said there were no drugs at the scene.