Keanu Reeves is addressing Matthew Perry's strange hatred of him in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. The Friends alum wrote about his disdain for Reeves’ life as he was struck with tragedy.
“Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry wrote in the memoir. His first movie, 1988’s A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, Perry acted alongside Reeves’ longtime best friend River Phoenix. In the film, Perry plays Phoenix’s best friend and they became close while filming in Chicago. River tragically overdosed at age 23 in 1993.
Perry, 53, writes, “River was a beautiful man inside and out and too beautiful for this world, it turned out. It always seems to be the really talented guys who go down.” Elsewhere in the book, Perry gets another dig in at Reeves following Chris Farley’s death at age 33 in 1997. Perry co-starred with Farley on the 1998 comedy Almost Heroes. At this point, Perry was battling addiction at the height of his Friends fame. Once again, Perry didn’t think it was fair that Reeves was still alive, writing, “I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. Keanu Reeves walks among us.”
Following backlash of the strange morbid comments, Perry issued a statement to People last month, saying, “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu. I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”
“Keanu thought the comments came out of left field,” a source told Us Weekly. “It’s kind of backfired on Matthew anyway, which is why he had to apologize.”