Matthew Perry candidly admitted that he wanted to find lasting love and become a father just a year before his tragic death.
The “Friends” icon — who was found dead at his home in Los Angeles on Saturday at age 54 — told People in Oct. 2022 that he had long feared intimacy and pushed away women who got too close to him.
Perry had a number of high-profile romances over the years, dating stars including Julia Roberts and “Mean Girls” actress Lizzy Caplan. However, he admitted that he was usually the one to end a relationship.
“That was me afraid,” he admitted in the extraordinarily intimate interview. “I manifest something that’s wrong with them, and then I break up with them. But there can’t be something wrong with everyone. I’m the common denominator. I left first because I thought they were going to annihilate me.”
The actor’s 27-year battle with drug and alcohol addiction also derailed his love life. He did 15 separate stints in rehab between the mid 1990s and early 2020s.
But Perry told People that he had finally “gotten over” his “fear” of love after becoming sober in May 2021.
“I’m not run by the fear I used to be run by so everything’s kind of different,” he said of sobriety. “I’m feeling more confident and I’m not afraid of love anymore, so the next girl I go out with better watch out.”
Perry said that achieving sobriety in his mid-50s had given him a renewed focus on finding someone to share his life with.
“The thing that’s changed about me is I have no interest in hanging out with somebody that I don’t know or somebody that I’m not that into,” he stated. “The next person I really take seriously is somebody that I’m going to be in love with and not be scared by the things that used to scare me.”
But the actor admitted that he had strict stipulations about a future girlfriend, and was not interested in anybody without their own source of money, saying he had been “burned” by women only interested in his pocketbook.
Perry said a “dealbreaker” for a relationship would be a woman “who I start to think is in it for the money.”
“It happens more often than you think,” he proclaimed.” Somebody who has their own wealth is a pretty key component for me… Somebody who’s self-supporting. In every way, but monetarily especially because I got burned a few times by women who wanted my money, not really caring about me.”
Meanwhile, the perennial bachelor said he was also looking forward to becoming a father, saying: “I think I’d be great. I really do. I grew up with a lot of little kids around me, and that’s probably why, but I can’t wait.”
Perry’s most high-profile romance was with Roberts, whom he dated from 1995 to 1996.
The “Pretty Woman” superstar even made a guest appearance alongside Perry in the second season of “Friends.” (The late actor died on what was also Roberts’ 56th birthday on Saturday.)
Meanwhile, the actor went on to have a six-year romance with Caplan, whom he dated from 2006 to 2012.
Perry subsequently had a string of short relationships before falling for literary agent Molly Hurwitz. They became engaged in Nov. 2020, but split in June the following year.