George Clooney has broken his silence over the loss of his old friend Matthew Perry after the actor’s sudden death.

According to the Ocean’s Eleven star, who spoke to Deadline to promote his new film The Boys In The Boat, he had known the Friends star ever since the latter was just 16 years old.

Recalling his friendship with the funnyman, Clooney said he and Perry would often play paddle tennis together.

“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid,” he said.

“He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.’ And he got on probably one of the best ever.”

Unfortunately, as Clooney put it, becoming a star on one of the most popular sitcoms of all time didn’t make the Chandler Bing actor any happier.

“And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him,” Clooney added of Perry’s Friends debut in 1994.

“We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff.”

In his 2022 memoir, Perry opened up about his addiction to drugs and alcohol as he revealed he was rarely sober.

“And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life,” Clooney added.

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