From a Washington Post column by David Von Drehle headlined “For Matthew Perry, the curse of a wish come true”:

“Nobody wanted to be famous more than me,” Matthew Perry said this year. He had come to question that ambition, because, he said, “fame does not do what you think it’s going to do.”

Perry spoke from experience. At 25, he became one of the most famous men in the United States, instantly recognizable to tens of millions of fans as the droll, wisecracking Chandler Bing of the smash hit comedy series “Friends.” The show was one of the last mass experiences of the network television age, anchor of NBC’s “Must See TV” branding that drew audiences around the turn of the century much larger than even the biggest hits of today.