Matthew Perry was on cloud nine when his romance with Julia Roberts kicked off in the mid-’90s — and it all began via fax.
“Somewhere in the world, there is a stack of faxes about two feet long — a two-foot-long courtship, filled with poems and flights of fancy and two huge stars falling for each other and connecting in a beautiful, romantic way,” Perry recalled in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.”
Perry reflected on their relationship nearly one year before his tragic death at age 54 on Saturday. In his autobiography, he revealed that the two initially met when “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman urged him to woo her because the actress was interested in appearing on the NBC sitcom.
“Turned out Julia had been offered the post-Super Bowl episode in my season two and she would only do the show if she could be in my storyline,” he wrote.
“I thought long and hard about what to say on the card. I wanted it to sound professional, star to star. (Well, star to much bigger star.) But I wanted something a tad flirty in there, too, to match what she had said,” he went on. “I’m still proud of what I settled on.”
He added: “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.’ “
Her reaction, however, was a bit puzzling.
“Her reply was that if I adequately explained quantum physics to her, she’d agree to be on the show. Wow. First of all, I’m in an exchange with the woman for whom lipstick was invented, and now I have to hit the books,” he gushed.
After he completed the task — sprinkled in with some metaphorical notes — the Oscar winner accepted the invitation.
“Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift: bagels — lots and lots of bagels. Sure, why not? It was Julia f – – king Roberts,” Perry noted. “At the time, I was walking on air. I was the center of it all and nothing could touch me. The white-hot flame was mine — I kept passing my hand through it, but it didn’t burn yet; it was the inert center.”
The budding romance began with a three-month-long courtship by daily faxes, which turned romantic. Then they would move on to phone calls that lasted for more than five hours.
“It wasn’t uncommon for me to read these faxes three, four, sometimes five times, grinning at that paper like some kind of moron. It was like she was placed on this planet to make the world smile, and now, in particular, me. I was grinning like some fifteen-year-old on his first date,” Perry wrote in his memoir. “It was clear we were in deep smit.”
Then on a Thursday, Roberts called and said she’d be at his house that Saturday.
“How did she even know where I lived?” he asked himself. “Sure enough, at 2 p.m. that Saturday, there was a knock on my door. Deep breaths, Matty. When I opened it, there she was, there was a smiling Julia Roberts on the other side.”
Perry said that he felt like the “king of the world” alongside the “My Best Friend’s Wedding” star. However, his personal battles with drug and alcohol addiction held him back from continuing their relationship.
“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me,” he admitted. “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.”
Perry, who died on Roberts’ 56th birthday, later gushed about watching his ex win the Academy Award for “Erin Brockovich” in 2001.
“I was incredibly happy for her,” he wrote. “As for me, I was just grateful to have made it one more day.”
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