Jennifer Aniston was ‘one of the first to arrive’ at her Friends co-star Matthew Perry‘s funeral – but ‘kept herself to herself’ throughout the simple, hour-long
ceremony.
The actress, 54; Lisa Kudrow, 60; Courteney Cox, 59; and David Schwimmer, 57, arrived as a quartet as they prepared to say their last goodbyes to Perry at
Forest Lawn cemetery in Los Angeles.
They were joined outside the church by fellow cast mate Matt LeBlanc, 56, while Perry’s tearful mother Suzanne Morrison, 84, and Dateline journalist stepfather Keith, 76, were in attendance, as was his father John Perry, 82.
Aniston was ‘one of the first to arrive’ at the ceremony on Friday, with an onlooker telling DailyMail.com: ‘She kept herself to herself. This is a high profile gathering.’
Perry died aged 54 in an apparent drowning accident at his Pacific Palisades, California, home.
Aniston and Perry – born just six months apart – were the youngest of the six Friends and as such stuck up an immediate camaraderie when the show first started shooting in 1994.
He wrote in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing that they had first met three years before Friends started and he tried to date her but she turned him down.
But this early rejection didn’t stop Aniston and Perry from forming a close friendship during the 10 years they spent together on the set of Friends – with Aniston supporting him through his battle with drug addiction.
‘Nobody shed more tears for Matthew during the darkest points of his struggles with addiction than Jennifer,’ one close friend of the actress told DailyMail.com.
‘There was speculation at the time of the 2021 Friends reunion that Matthew wouldn’t be a part of it because his demons had gotten the better of him. But Jennifer absolutely wouldn’t have done it without him.
‘He put in the work and made it a success even though he seemed frail.
‘But Jennifer genuinely thought his worst days were behind him. So his death just two years later has come as a bitter body blow to her.