Why We Should Trust Matthew Perry

CelebrityNetWorth.com tells me that Matthew Perry has an approximate net worth of $70 million.  No, I'm definitely not suggesting that having a lot of money is an indication that a person is trustworthy.  In fact, many of the people with the most money have that money precisely because they can't be trusted (Jamie Dimon, for example, is reportedly worth about $400 million). 

No,what I'm saying is that certain actors reach certain points in their careers at which they're just looking for work.  (Do you think Richard Grieco wanted to go from modeling for Calvin Klein and his role as the hot bad boy cop on one of the hottest shows on television to playing that guy who got mutated into a cat and killed everyone?)

When that moment arrives, we can pretty much rest assured that whatever picture or pilot the guy does next will be crap. I'm not sure why--there's no inherent reason a show or movie with a low-budget and an unknown producer can't be good; good ones are made all the time. But that's how it seems to go.

The point is, Matthew Perry never reached that point.  Despite his past drug problems and various absences from the public eye, that Friends money meant that he never had to accept a part he didn't want and that he could take the time to develop projects he could believe in.

Sure, we might all have had a moment of "is that what he's come to?" when he took second billing to Disney star Zac Efron in 17 Again, but those concerns probably dried up and blew away if you actually saw the movie, which wasn't great art but was sweet, entertaining and well-cast.

Though I've far from seen all of his work, I can honestly say that I've never seen Perry in something I didn't enjoy.  At different levels, sure, but I've never thought, "Well, that was a waste of time" or turned off a show in the middle and gone on with my life--and I walk out of the room during television shows and forget that I was watching them all the time. 

So I'm thinking that, 30+ years into his acting career and with no financial incentive to make bad decisions, we should assume that Perry knows what he's doing when he chooses a project and turn on the television.