The Last Movie Friends' Matthew Perry Was In Before He Died
For the past three decades, Matthew Perry has been a fixture of American popular culture. His career shot into the stratosphere in 1994 when he took on the role of Chandler Bing in "Friends," playing the perpetually sarcastic New Yorker for all 10 seasons of the show and cementing his legacy in the entertainment industry. When he died suddenly of an apparent drowning at the age of 54 on October 28, 2023, it was a shock to fans around the world, many of whom grew up watching him on television.
Although Perry continued to work as an actor throughout the 2000s and 2010s, his most recent projects were in the TV realm (his last credit was for the miniseries "The Kennedys After Camelot" in 2017, where he played Ted Kennedy, over-the-top Massachusetts accent and all). But to find his last film performance, you have to go all the way back to 2009, when he shared a starring role with a former child star hoping to break out of the Disney mold.
A high school fantasy
In "17 Again," Matthew Perry plays Mike O'Donnell, a middle-aged man for whom things are not exactly going great. He's passed over for a much-deserved promotion at work in favor of someone with little experience, his teenage kids (Michelle Trachtenberg and Sterling Knight) want nothing to do with him, and he's struggling to grapple with his recent divorce from his wife Scarlet (Leslie Mann). So it's not surprising that he finds himself fantasizing about his high school years, when he was on top of the world and his life was full of promise. He's hardly the first former jock to look back fondly on the best years of his life, after all.
But with the help of some magical hijinks, the impossible happens — he's turned back into the 17-year-old version of himself, played by Zac Efron (fresh off the "High School Musical" train). Not only does this give him an opportunity to fix where he perceives his life to have gone wrong, but he gets the chance to reconnect with his kids and maybe even win back Scarlet.
When "17 Again" was released, it earned mixed reviews from critics, with many regarding it as likable but formulaic. That didn't stop audiences — particularly younger viewers — from flocking to the theaters, however. "17 Again" went on to earn over three times its budget, raking in nearly $140 million at the worldwide box office.