Friends star Matthew Perry says he dumped Julia Roberts

Friends star Matthew Perry says he dumped Julia Roberts because he was scared she would leave him

• Friends star Matthew Perry told how he wooed Julia Roberts with fax messages
• He then ditched the A-List movie actress ‘for fear that she would leave him’ 
• Five years after the relationship ended, Roberts won Oscar for Erin Brockovich
• Perry’s memoirs ‘Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing’ will soon be out

Friends star Matthew Perry has told how he wooed Julia Roberts with hundreds of fax messages – before ditching her because he feared she would leave him. 

Perry, 53, revealed that their romance began after the Pretty Woman actress was approached to appear in the sitcom in 1995. Producers urged him to contact Ms Roberts after she stipulated she would only take a guest role if she could be in a storyline with his character, Chandler Bing. 

Perry said: ‘I sent her three dozen red roses and the card read, “The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.” 

‘Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift – bagels, lots and lots of bagels,’ he tells The Times. 

Her agreement to star in a special episode of the second series of Friends prompted what Perry now describes as a ‘three-month courtship’ through daily faxes while she was working on a film in France. By the time shooting for the episode started, they were a couple. 

Writing in his forthcoming autobiography, Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing, Perry reveals that they exchanged hundreds of messages in the days before email was commonplace. 

Friends star Matthew Perry, 53, revealed that his romance with Julia Roberts began after she was approached to appear in the sitcom in 1995 (pictured)

He writes: ‘Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive. I was so excited that some nights I would find myself out at some party sharing a flirtatious exchange with an attractive woman and cut the conversation short so I could race home and see if a new fax had arrived. Nine times out of ten, one had.’

He and Ms Roberts, who turns 55 this week, eventually embarked on a relationship, but Perry dumped her two months after she appeared on the show. 

He admits: ‘Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. 

‘So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts. 

‘She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can’t begin to describe the look of confusion on her face.’ 

In the book, which will be published on November 1, Perry also reveals his near-death experience with opioids. And he confesses that five years after splitting from Ms Roberts, he watched her pick up an Oscar for her role in Erin Brockovich while he was ‘sweating and twitching’ in rehab, surrounded by fellow patients. 

Perry and Ms Roberts, who turns 55 this week, eventually embarked on a relationship (pictured at the time), but Perry dumped her two months after she appeared on the show

Perry writes: ‘As she made her speech, a voice rose in that room in that rehab, urgent, sad, soft, angry, pleading, filled with longing and tears. I made a joke. “I’ll take you back,” I said. “I’ll take you back.” The whole room laughed, though this was not a funny line in a sitcom. This was real life now. Those people on the TV were no longer my people. No, the people I was lying in front of, shaking, covered in blankets, were my people now.’ 

Perry also reveals that he was infatuated with Jennifer Aniston, whom he met through mutual acquaintances three years before they starred in Friends together. 

He says: ‘I was immediately taken by her (how could I not be?) and liked her. And I got the sense she was intrigued too – maybe it was going to be something. Back then I got two jobs in one day… a funniest home videos-type show and a sitcom. So I called Jennifer and I said, “You’re the first person I wanted to tell this to.” Bad idea. I could feel ice forming through the phone. 

‘Looking back, it was clear that this made her think I liked her too much or in the wrong kind of way… and I only compounded the error by then asking her out. 

‘She declined (which made it very difficult to actually go out with her), but said that she’d love to be friends with me. 

‘I compounded the compound by blurting, “We can’t be friends!”’

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