In his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry recalls the moment his ex-girlfriend Julia Roberts won the best actress Oscar for Erin Brockovich while watching a revival. .
While he was recovering in Marina del Rey, California, Perry recalled hearing Robert’s name called at the 2001 Academy Awards. After kissing her then-boyfriend Benjamin Brett, she walked on stage to accept her award.
“While she was giving her speech, a voice rose up in that recovery room, urgent, sad, tender, angry, pleading, longing, and tearful, arguing with the universe while God spoke to the hard, cold world. Calmly tapped his cane,” Perry wrote.
“I made a joke. ‘I’ll take you back,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you back.'” The whole room laughed, even though it wasn’t a funny line in a sitcom. It was now. It was real life. Those people on TV were no longer my people. No, the people I was lying in front of, shivering, covered in blankets, were now my people. And I was lucky to have them. They were saving my life.”
The Friends alum noted that he was “incredibly happy” for Roberts but also “grateful” that he lived to see another day. “The days are long when you’re at the bottom,” he added, adding, “I didn’t need an Oscar, I just needed a day.”
Perry, 53, revealed that the two began dating shortly after Roberts, 54, signed on to guest star on the ’90s NBC sitcom. However, he wrote that the beautiful actress “will only do the show if she can be in my storyline,” adding that he would “have to persuade her.”
Perry, however, let her insecurities get the best of her and broke up with Roberts after two months of their relationship.
