Matthew Perry has opened up about why he felt the need to end things with Hollywood beauty Julia Roberts.
The two starred together in a 1996 episode of Friends, titled The One After the Superbowl: Part 2.
Producers on the hit NBC show had encouraged Perry, now 53, to get in touch with the screen legend after she hinted that she would be keen to appear on the show as a special guest if her character was involved in a storyline with Perry's character, Chandler Bing.
Per The Times, Perry recalled in his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: “I sent her three dozen red roses and the card read, ‘The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.’”
“Not only did Julia agree to do the show, but she also sent me a gift – bagels, lots and lots of bagels,” he added.
After she agreed to an appearance on the show, the two became involved in a "three-month courtship."
The couple exchanged "hundreds" of fax messages while Roberts was shooting a movie in France. But when she returned to the States to film the Friends episode with Perry, they were already official.
He wrote in the autobiography: “Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive.
“I was so excited that some nights I would find myself out at some party sharing a flirtatious exchange with an attractive woman and cut the conversation short so I could race home and see if a new fax had arrived. Nine times out of ten, one had.”
Their fling was short-lived, though, as the actor ended things because he feared she would leave him.
Perry explained: "Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not?
"I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.
"She might have considered herself slumming it with a TV guy, and TV guy was now breaking up with her. I can't begin to describe the look of confusion on her face."
