Matthew Perry's memoir 'has helped a lot of people'

Matthew Perry believes his memoir has "helped" a lot of people.

The 53-year-old actor discussed his experiences in Hollywood and his struggles with addiction in his recently-released memoir, and Matthew feels that he's achieved his overarching ambition with 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing'.

He told E! News: "People have just loved it.

"I shied away from nothing and I told the truth and the biggest thing was, the goal was, to help people and I know of a lot of people already who have been helped by it."

Matthew struggled with addiction during his time on 'Friends', and the actor has been heartened by how people have reacted to the memoir.

Asked about the most surprising aspect of the reaction, Matthew said: "That people took the story into their hearts. And we've already heard about five different people that have read it and then checked into rehab the next day."

Meanwhile, Matthew recently revealed that he dropped out of 'Don't Look Up' after his heart stopped beating for five minutes.

The actor was cast as a Republican journalist in the Adam McKay-directed movie, but he was forced to quit the project after his heart stopped beating during surgery and he required CPR treatment to survive.

In his memoir, Matthew - who was having "some kind of weird medical device in [his] back" - says: "I was given the shot at 11:00am.

"I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn’t a heart attack - I didn’t flatline - but nothing had been beating.

"I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn’t want the guy from ‘Friends’ dying on his table and did CPR on me for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn’t been on ‘Friends', would he have stopped at three minutes? Did ‘Friends’ save my life again?"