There's been plenty of commotion on The Internet recently surrounding actor's Matthew Perry's new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, due to a extremely controversial comment in which saw the former Friends star questioned why fellow actor Keanu Reeves (John Wick, The Matrix) was still alive, while “original thinkers” like Heath Ledger and River Phoenix were not.
In another eyebrow-arching moment within the book, Perry, who starred as Chandler Bling in the phenomenally successful sitcom, reveals that he once made out with actress Valerie Bertinelli, who was married to Eddie Van Halen at the time.
Not only that, but Perry claims that the pair's heated interaction took place while they were standing right next to the guitar god, who was apparently unconscious at the time.
According to the memoir, Perry worked alongside Bertinelli on the short-lived sitcom Sydney four years before he landed the role of Chandler Bing, and this was apparently where his passionate and deep-seated feelings for her initially bloomed. Elaborating on his crush, the actor admits he thought Bertinelli “way out of my league”, with the added complication being the that the actress was “married to one of the most famous rock stars on the planet, Eddie Van Halen.”
Perry describes how he “harboured elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me.”
Detailing what happened on the night he finally acted on his feelings for Bertinelli, Perry says: “As the night progressed, it was clear that Eddie had enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard, one more time, and eventually he just passed out, not ten feet away from us, but still.
"This was my chance! If you think I didn’t actually have a chance in hell, you’d be wrong, dear reader — Valerie and I had a long, elaborate make-out session… I told her I had thought about doing that for a long time, and she had said it right back to me.”
Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli married on April 11, 1981 and divorced in 2007, after separating in 2001.
