“Friends” actor Matthew Perry has issued an apology to Keanu Reeves for making a crass comment about him in his new memoir.
Perry announced earlier this year that he had plans to release a memoir that detailed his life and his own struggle with addiction.
“So much has been written about me in the past. I thought it was time people heard from me. The highs were high, the lows were low. But I have lived to tell the tale, even though at times it looked like I wouldn’t,” Perry tweeted in February. “And it’s all in here.”
What was said about Keanu Reeves
The new memoir, titled “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” will not be released until Nov. 1, but excerpts were recently published by Variety.
In a section of the memoir, Perry details his friendship with actor River Phoenix, who died in 1993. This is the first of two sections that refers to Keanu Reeves.
“River was a beautiful man, inside and out — too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down,” Perry wrote in the memoir, according to Variety. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”
Entertainment Tonight reported that Perry referred to this statement a second time when he wrote about the passing of Chris Farley in 1997.
“His disease has progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share),” Perry wrote. “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us.”
Perry issued an apology to Reeves
The controversial statements made about Reeves were picked up by the public as digs at “The Matrix” star and Perry cleared up the statements by saying he was not targeting Reeves.
People reported that Perry apologized in a statement for what he wrote about the actor and explained that he is actually a big fan of Reeves. “I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”
Reeves has not commented on the situation.