After three long months of rehab, I was feeling better.
Back on my feet, I was very excited to live a life that was not completely ruled by my alcoholism and addiction. I had stopped drinking and drugging. And my cravings for each had disappeared. Something way, way bigger than me was in charge now. Miracles do happen.
The first move I made was driving to Jamie Tarses's house.
"I need time to process being sober," I said to her, "and that's going to take up all my time. I'm incredibly grateful for all the wonderful things you did for me."
I could see her face losing color.
"But … I can't be in a relationship right now," I said.
So, to be clear: in order to adequately pay sweet, wonderful Jamie back for two years of giving up huge portions of her own very busy and important life by basically being my nurse, I ended our relationship. Jamie Tarses was one of the most magical, beautiful, smart … oh so smart. I loved the way her mind worked. And I broke up with her. Proving that getting sober didn't make me any smarter-in fact it may have made me a colossal idiot. Jamie was probably the most amazing person I had ever met, and she loved me. But I wasn't ready for that.
What I said to Jamie that day was all bullshit, of course. I was newly sober, I was a huge star, and I wanted to sleep with every single girl in Southern California.
And, I did. [Insert cartoon anvil landing on my head here.]
Because of this huge star thing, I had no problem getting dates. And this is how I opened each and every one of them.
"Hi, sorry I'm late.
"You look great by the way. I've been really excited to finally meet you." [Pause for appropriate positive response.]
"But I don't want to get off on the wrong foot here," I would continue. "I want to be as transparent as possible. I am an open book. Ask me anything-I will tell you the truth."
More warmth would here be shared; on a good day, she would tend to be nodding along, loving my transparency, my emotional pitch, my very air of suave involvement.
Then, I'd bring the hammer down.
"I'm not sure what you are looking for, but if it's any kind of emotional attachment, I am not your man." [Pause to let this sink in.]
"I'm not going to call you every day," I went on, "and I'm not going to be your boyfriend. But if it's fun you're looking for, I. Am. Your. Man."
That great twentieth-century philosopher Cyndi Lauper was right as it turned out-girls do in fact just want to have fun. But in case the message wasn't entirely clear, I added some salt to the heady stew I was ladling out.
"I'm an extremely passionate person," I said, a little abashedly, in case they thought I protesteth too much. "In fact, I'm a bit of a romantic. Even beating up the elliptical machine, all I do is listen to songs about women in some kind of duress.
"But I am not looking for, or available for, any kind of emotional relationship," I repeated, just in case the message had been a tad fuzzy. "I just got out of a long-term relationship and had just gotten sober and I am not looking to be in one now."
And then it was time to nail the landing.
"Oh, did you want to look at your menu?" I'd say. "I hear the food here is fantastic."
It is amazing to me how many women signed up for this after all that. I presume many of them thought they could change me. What's that you say? Oh yes, I did get the occasional abrupt walkout, of course. A few women would say, "Well, I'm not interested in that at all," and would just get up and leave. (No surprise that those were the ones that I was really interested in.)
But for the most part my speech worked to a tee.
I use the word "worked" loosely. Because I barely need to point out that the best you could say about all this was that at any point you could exchange my head for a donkey's ass and no one would see the difference. Not only had I just broken up with the greatest woman on the planet, what I was proposing was just a giant fucking waste of time. Sex is great and everything, but I think I would be a much more fulfilled person now if I had spent those years looking for something more.
In a life riddled with mistakes, this may have been my biggest one. And mistakes are hard to undo.
During that time, I met at least five women that I could have married, had children with. Had I done so just once, I would not now be sitting in a huge house, overlooking the ocean, with no one to share it with, save a sober companion, a nurse, and a gardener twice a week-a gardener I would often run outside and give a hundred dollars to so he'd turn his fucking leaf blower off. (We can put a man on the moon, but we can't invent a silent one of those things?)
Natasha Wagner was one of these women. Not only is she beautiful, smart, caring, and sexy, she's also the daughter of Natalie Wood and Richard Gregson (and raised by Robert Wagner, and then by Robert Wagner and Jill St. John after her mother's tragic death). Natasha had it all; she was perfect! But I wasn't looking for perfect, I was looking for more. More, more, more. So, because I'd done the speech at her, and then not properly dated her, we parted ways, and I was left to find even more perfect women when in fact I'd already found them.
A few years later I was driving on the Pacific Coast Highway one day in some kind of fuck-off-everybody car, a car so amazing that I now cannot for the life of me remember what make it was. I had the top down; the glistening sun was picking the edges of the surf out in the ocean and turning it into a slippery silver. Dudes on surfboards lounged around waiting for The One, which never came; I knew exactly how they felt.
Then, my phone rang. It was Natasha. She had fallen for me after one of these dates, so she had had to go-that's the rule, Matty, that's the rule!-but somehow, even though I'd jettisoned her, she was still a friend.
"Hey, Matty!" she said in her inimitably sunny way. She was as bright as the sun on the ocean, always. Sometimes I had to look away just to get my bearings back.
"Hey, Natasha! How are you?" I said. It was so lovely to hear from her. "What's going on with you?"
Perhaps, if she was calling me, there was a chance that we…?
"I'm a mother!" she announced. "I just had a baby girl. Clover!"
"Oh…," I said, then quickly recovered, or thought I did. "That's fantastic news, babe. I love that name, too!"
We talked for a little while longer, then we got off the phone. And then, out of nowhere, the fuck-you-everybody car was pulling over-because I was pulling it over-and I lurched to a stop on the verge. The sun was still high, the surfers were up on their boards, but I was utterly thunderstruck with emotion. The giant wave everyone was looking for was happening in my head.
"She could have had that child with me," I said, to no one, as I sobbed like a newborn myself.
I was so sad and alone. I cried for about forty-five minutes until, gradually, a new thought came, like clouds across the sky above an ocean:
Jesus, this is quite a reaction.…
It behooved me to work out why I'd broken down so hard. I sat there, wondering, and wondering, until I finally realized what the fuck had I been doing: I'd been looking for an hour or two of pleasure with every woman ever invented when there was so much life I was missing. Is this why I got sober? To sleep with women? Surely God had something better in store for me than that.
I would need to find out, and fast. Natasha's life was blossoming while mine was turning into one huge mistake.
When I try to work out how sobriety and addiction work for me, I keep coming back to this line: I'm capable of staying sober unless anything happens.
Some quiet days, when I was sober, I'd think back to the recent past and wonder why I'd ever picked up pills or drugs after getting clean. When I was sober, strong, and feeling like a normal person, I'd sometimes have a fantasy of putting on a baseball cap and shades and heading off to mingle with the regular people poking around the La Brea Tar Pits or standing next to some celebrity's star on the Walk of Fame, just to see what it's like. Not in the sense of "I'm a star, I'm better than them"; no, in the sense of "Oh, so this is what a sober life feels like."
But I was still so often just a tourist in sobriety. It was so hard to put down roots in it. Why was it so hard for me, when I'd seen hundreds around me do it with impunity?
I was dating literally everyone and anyone in LA, but I'd also met a woman in New York I really liked. I was not faithful to her, but I loved her. I was newly sober, and famous, and I wanted to fuck everybody in Los Angeles County; many reciprocated my desires. My speech worked far more than it had the right to. But the woman I loved in New York was like a good mom-a great caretaker and so beautiful, so of course I was drawn to her and, of course, I screwed it up. But it wasn't all bad-in LA, I was also working to help other alcoholics get sober-sponsoring people, answering calls whenever needed, imparting advice. Friends was a juggernaut, too, and I didn't have to worry about fucking that up-I was clean, and I was about to have my season, the one where everyone was talking about Chandler. (Nine was the only year I was completely sober for a Friends season. Care to hazard a guess as to which was the only year I got nominated for an Emmy for best actor in a comedy? Yup, season nine. If that doesn't tell you something, nothing will. What did I do differently that season? I listened. I didn't just stand there and wait for my turn to speak. Sometimes in acting, it's more powerful to listen than to talk. I have tried to incorporate that in real life, too. Know more, say less. That's my new mantra.)
The two years flew by; maybe this is what normal people feel. Maybe I'd found my calling; beyond Friends, beyond movie stardom, beyond everything, I was here to help people get and stay sober.
And then, something happened, and I'm capable of staying sober unless anything happens.
One of the women I'd used the speech on had grown attached to me, and as we know, dear reader, if that happens, I have to backpedal.
So, that's what I did. I said, "I don't love you. I warned you when I met you.… Remember the speech, when I asked you about the menu?"
But it was too late. Some kind of agony-hook was in her; it was my fault. Is this why I got sober? To sleep with women? And then hurt them? Surely God had something better in store for me than that.
She was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the time, and I went to see her, but she could not be consoled. She reminded me of my mother-no matter how much charm I used, no matter which funny thing I said, I could not help her pain.
Eventually, she stormed off into the bathroom, leaving me alone in the room. On the side table, there was a knocked-over bottle of Vicodin. Three of the pills had spilled out under the glare of the bedside lamp. She was locked in the bathroom, screaming; I couldn't take care of the situation. This was the anything that was happening. So, I took three of the pills, and somehow made it through the night, but I had thereby ended two years of sobriety.
I was in deep, deep shit again. Because once you puncture the membrane of sobriety, the phenomenon of craving kicks in, and you're off to the races one more time.
It was impossible for me to get back. I graduated quickly to getting my own pills. And then I was drinking again. I was knowingly surfing down a long slide to oblivion. But it was bigger than me-there was literally nothing I could do about it.
Looking back, all I would have had to do was to tell someone about it, but that would mean I would have to stop. But stopping was not an option.
At one point in 1999, I was sitting alone in my way-too-big house at the top of Carla Ridge, yet another house with a beautiful view, this time of the Los Angeles Basin. Down there, somewhere, normal Los Angeles life was going on (Tar Pits; Walk of Fame)-up here, I was just waiting it out-drink in one hand, a steady flow of Marlboro Lights in the other. We were five seasons into Friends; Ross and Rachel had just stumbled out of a chapel married, ahead of Chandler and Monica. Friends was a cultural touchstone, a shorthand for the millennium, the number one show on the planet, everyone's favorite watch.
And that way of speaking! "Could this be any hotter?" had swept the nation, and now everyone was talking that way. Clinton was in the White House; the date September 11 meant nothing special, unless it was your birthday or your wedding anniversary. All the water in the world was flowing downhill into a sparkling lake, upon which the most beautiful, nameless birds endlessly floated.
Now, a messenger was at my door, interrupting my reverie. It was as if I was reenacting what had once happened to the Romantic poet Coleridge, who had been interrupted from his own buzz-he got his via opium-by the legendary "person from Porlock." At the time, Coleridge had the entirety of his poem "Kubla Kahn" memorized in his opiate-addled mind, but the messenger who had arrived at his door that day in 1797 had shattered that memory, leaving only fifty-four lines for posterity.
I was no Coleridge, but my buzz had been notable all the same-the view and the vodka tonic and the sweet Marlboro burn had rendered me into a safe place, where I was no longer unaccompanied, where somehow, back there in the house behind me, a beautiful wife and a gaggle of amazing kids were tumbling around in the playroom while Daddy had some quality time alone in his screening room. (You want to feel lonely? Watch a movie alone in a screening room.) It was at times like these, when the haze was deepest, that I could imagine my life was not filled with holes, that the minefield that was my past had been metal-detected by men in hazard suits into a benign and beautiful safety.
But now my doorbell was buzzing, killing my buzz, and because there was no wife, no kids, it was up to me to reluctantly answer it. The "person from Porlock" handed me a package, inside of which was a script entitled The Whole Nine Yards. And my manager had written on it, "Could be pay dirt."
It was no "Kubla Khan," but I could see it was going to be huge.
I was always bad at reading scripts. Back then, I'd be offered millions of dollars to do movies and barely crack the first few pages. I'm embarrassed to admit that now, given that these days I'm writing scripts myself and it's like pulling teeth to get actors to respond. Maybe they feel how I used to feel: that in a life of fun and fame and money, reading a script, no matter the size of the number attached, feels all too much like school.
The universe will teach you, though. All those years I was too this, too that, to read a script, but last year I wrote a screenplay for myself and was trying get it made until I realized that I was too old to play the part. Most fifty-three-year-olds have worked their shit out already, so I needed to hire a thirty-year-old. The one I chose took weeks and weeks to respond, and I couldn't believe how rude his behavior was.
"Do I still have enough juice to even get an independent movie made?" I asked my manager, Doug, in frustration.
"Not really," Doug said.
But back then in 1999, my "person from Porlock" had brought me a script that even I could see had potential, and that potential was that none other than Bruce Willis was attached.
At the turn of the century, there was no bigger movie star than Bruce Willis. He'd already banked Look Who's Talking and its sequel, the Die Hard franchise, Pulp Fiction.… There was no one more successful back then. Not to mention that it would be a welcome relief from the seventy-two romantic comedies I'd just completed. Mitchell Kapner had written a funny script, filled with twists and turns, and it was easy to read: always a good sign. Best of all, Bruce Willis was in it, and I played the lead character. Show me an acclaimed and successful TV star and I will show you a frustrated wannabe movie star.
Pay dirt? You bet your ass. But first, I had to get through a dinner with the director and my costar's brother.
I showed up the next night at Citrus on Melrose. Back then, this was the Hollywood restaurant: expensive, exclusive, jacket required, a line of paparazzi at the door clicking away madly at everyone who came and went. That night, the comings and goings were me; the film's director, Jonathan Lynn, a short round British man who'd made My Cousin Vinny and who just so happened to be Oliver Sacks's cousin; and one of the film's producers, Bruce's brother, David (David got the hair, by the way, Bruce got the chin).
I had donned the requisite movie-star black suit for the dinner; I'd arrived a minute or two late, just because that's what movie stars do. The dinner went really well, even if no one touched their food, in the standard Hollywood way. Jonathan was very smart and funny-he had that dry, British approach to humor in which he'd say something that was seemingly serious, but there would be a twinkle in his eye, just enough to signal that he was busting balls. David was attentive and interesting and smart; as for me, well, I had already decided to do the movie. The original script had no physical comedy in it, so I said things like, "I think this would be a great opportunity for some physical comedy, and I'd be more than willing to fall down a flight of stairs and leap down some mountaintops to work with Bruce Willis."
Jonathan and David laughed and seemed relieved. Eventually, the "dinner" wrapped up. Jonathan said, "Well, you're our guy-we really want you to do this." Hands shaken, and paparazzi ignored, I jumped into my forest-green Porsche and squealed away.
I'm gonna be the lead in a Bruce Willis movie, I thought, as once again, all the lights on Sunset were green. Back at my house on Carla Ridge, the moon had come up, lonely, mournful, casting a strange and awkward shadow across my view. I put on the TV, poured a vodka tonic, and waited.
The stars were lining up again; had the rise and rise of Matthew Perry just taken yet another giant leap forward? This is what I thought as the actual stars rose in a clear, dark sky. I started to count them, even though I knew the superstition that once you reach a hundred, you die.
I stopped at ninety-nine, just in case.
The following morning, I got a message on my answering machine.
"Matthew, this is Bruce Willis. Call me back, or I'll burn your house down and break both your knees and arms and you'll be left with just the stubs for hands and feet for the rest of your life."
Click, dial tone.
I figured this was a call I should probably return.
A few days later we met at Ago, yet another fancy Italian restaurant in Hollywood, in the private room in the back, the one that's reserved for people of Mr. Willis's status. Once again, I jetted up in my Porsche, barely putting it in park long enough to hand the valet my keys.
But this night, I was on time.
Bruce Willis did not disappoint-he oozed A-list. He didn't just take over a room, he was the room. In fact, I knew he was a real movie star when the first thing he did was teach the bartender how to make a perfect vodka tonic.
"Three-second pour," he said to the petrified man.
Bruce was forty-four years old, single (separated from Demi Moore at the time I met him), and he knew the exact recipe for the perfect drink. He was a party; to be near him was invigorating. After a while, we were visited in our private little room by Joe Pesci, whom Jonathan Lynn had directed in My Cousin Vinny, as well as several attendant attractive women. Bruce laughed at all my dumb jokes-he seemed to enjoy the spectacle of a younger, funny guy paying him his due respect and keeping up with his drinking (if he only knew). I was thrilled to be around him because he knew how to live life.
Dinner once again untouched, the two new best friends headed to his massive house off Mulholland-Bruce, too, seemed to like a view. The night ended with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry, drinks in hand, hitting golf balls into the San Fernando Valley below.
Those balls are going to land somewhere, I thought, and before I could imagine the damage a shot from a well-addressed five iron could do, or even the metaphorical nature of what we were doing, I stopped thinking at all and had another drink.
"Welcome to the pros," Bruce said at one point, referring, I presumed, to the life of a movie star, not to my golf game. We had begun a friendship, one in which we drank together and made each other laugh and complimented each other's swings.
Eventually, as always happens, the sun came up, and we said our bleary goodbyes. As I drove home, I remember thinking, Watch this guy-this is the way to be happy. Nothing seemed to bother Bruce; no one said no to him. This was, indeed, the A-leagues.
Around lunchtime that same day, Bruce called to invite me back to his house for a screening of his next movie, but I was way too sick and hungover to even contemplate showing up. Making my excuses, I asked him what the movie was called so I could catch it later.
"The Sixth Sense," he said.
So, I'd gotten The Whole Nine Yards and had embarked on a friendship with the most famous movie star on the planet, but even I knew I was drinking way too much to pull this movie off. Desperate measures would be needed. Some might be able to party perfectly well and still show up and do the work-but they were not addicts like I was.
If I was going to keep up with the partying, and with Bruce, and not go back to my hotel room and keep drinking, then I'd need something else to wind me down and make sure I could get to set the next day.
I called a friend-I use the term loosely-who I knew sold Xanax.
"How many would you like to purchase?" he skeeved at me.
"Give me a hundred," I said.
When they arrived, I sat on my bed, counting them. This way I can drink with Bruce and the others but then when I'm finally alone I can just pop one of these and go to sleep. I may have been a man with a plan, but I was also ignoring the fact that this was a completely lethal combination.
We flew on Bruce's plane (of course we did) to Montreal to make The Whole Nine Yards, arriving like conquering heroes ready to take the town by storm. I was the prodigal Canadian son, now returned, ready to party.
We set up shop at the Intercontinental Hotel. I had a regular room; Bruce had the whole top floor, which he immediately dubbed "Club Z," for no apparent reason. Within hours, he had also had a disco ball installed.
The Globe Restaurant became our other home away from home. The money and the drinks were flowing, and all the waitresses were hot.
Months earlier, I had started dating a woman called Renee. I'd met her at a restaurant in Los Angeles called Red. I was having dinner with the first assistant director of Friends, my pal Ben Weiss, and our waitress came and sat down next to me and started chatting to me. This was not normal waitress behavior, it seemed to me. When she had taken our order, I said to Ben, "Her name is going to be Samantha."
"Nah," he said, "she's definitely a Jennifer."
When she came back with our food, I said, "We're having a bet on your name. I have money on Sam, and my friend here thinks you're a Jen."
"Hi," she said, "I'm Renee." And somehow, a few drunken parties later, we were a couple.
Suffice to say, Renee had substituted for someone who'd broken my heart on an earlier movie, which put her already behind the eight ball … by the time I went to Montreal, we were mostly on the outs, but in any case-and I'm not proud to say this-I would have fucked mud at that stage in my life. Canadian mud at that.
The role itself was a snap. All I had to do was act scared of Bruce-which was easy-and act in love with Natasha Henstridge, which was even easier. The director, Jonathan, whom for some unknown reason I had taken to calling "Sammy," ran the kind of set I love-a very creative one. The best joke, no matter where it came from, would be picked, just like we did on Friends.
Amanda Peet was also in the cast. She was funny and smart and very attractive, and even though she had a boyfriend, she didn't mind flirting, which she did at the drop of a hat with both Bruce and me, to the point where one day Bruce shouted at her, "Pick one!"
At night, the parties raged under Bruce's disco ball in Club Z. Somehow, everyone still managed to show up at 6:00 A.M. for work. I say "somehow," but I know how I did: those hundred Xanax worked like a charm, though combined with my drinking they did tend to make my head resemble a Spalding basketball. Meanwhile Mr. A-list Willis over there looked like he could open an envelope with his chin.
Each day, with me nursing a killer hangover, but young enough to deal, we would gather and look at the sides (TV- and movie-speak for the work slated for the day). "We" was me, Jonathan Lynn, Bruce Willis, and the hilarious Kevin Pollak, who was playing Janni Gogolak, another mob boss. It was almost like a writers' room-we'd discuss what might be funny, what might go here in a scene, what might go there. A lot of the effort was to add physical comedy for me to do. I would run into windows, slam into doors. At one point I did a take in which I see a criminal, then turn, run into someone, get knocked back, clatter into a lamp, pick the lamp up and try to shield myself from the baddie with it. All my idea, all worked great.
At one point, Kevin had the line: "He shouldn't be able to breathe the air."
I suggested to him that he insert an unnaturally long pause before the words "the air." That was about the only time in my career where I could not keep it together-Kevin's performance of that line was so funny, and the pause kept getting longer and longer with each take we did, that in the end he had to do his coverage with me in a different room.
When the veil of Bruce Willis was removed, I just wanted to be his friend. I didn't want to be a suck-up to him like everybody else in the world. At one point when making The Whole Nine Yards we had a three-day weekend, and he flew me and Renee, and him and his girlfriend, to his house in the Turks and Caicos. It's a beautiful place with a stunning view of the ocean. They'd even thought to buy out all the surrounding properties so that paparazzi couldn't get their shots. All weekend we carried umbrellas with us to block us from the sun so that our faces wouldn't get too tanned and not match for the movie. A new movie star trick, one of many I learned from Mr. Willis.
But there was a big difference between Bruce and me. Bruce was a partier; I was an addict. Bruce has an on-off button. He can party like crazy, then get a script like The Sixth Sense and stop the partying and nail the movie sober. He doesn't have the gene-he's not an addict. There are plenty of examples of people in Hollywood who can party and still function-I was not one of them. When I was in my drinking and using days, if a police officer were to come to the door and say, "If you drink tonight, you're going to jail tomorrow," I would start packing for jail, because once I start, I cannot stop. All I had control over was the first drink. After that, all bets were off. (See under: The man takes the drink, the drink takes all the rest.) Once I believe the lie that I can just have one drink, I am no longer responsible for my actions. I need people and treatment centers and hospitals and nurses to help me.
I can't stop. And if I didn't get ahold of this soon, it was going to kill me. I had a monster in my brain, a monster who wanted to get me alone, and convince me to have that first drink or pill, and then that monster would engulf me.
Despite the partying, we were all pros on that movie and managed to turn out a huge crowd pleaser. Early notices for it were positive-one, in Variety magazine, read:
Bruce Willis will deliver the customers, but it's Matthew Perry who will attract the most attention in a pratfall-filled turn that bears comparison to what Tom Hanks was doing 12-15 years ago.
This was high praise indeed for someone who looked up to Tom. Bruce hadn't been sure the film would work at all, and I'd bet him it would-if he lost, he had to do a guest spot on Friends (he's in three episodes of season six).
The Whole Nine Yards became the number one movie in America for three weeks straight.
I had done it-the dream I'd had since the ninth grade had finally come true: The Whole Nine Yards was no Back to the Future, but Michael J. Fox and I are the only two people who have had the number one movie and the number one TV show at the same time.
I should have been the toast of the town, but back in LA, it was clear, at least to me, that my addiction had progressed to dangerous levels. I was at the point where I was basically unable to leave the house-drugs and alcohol had completely taken over. I was so strung out on drugs and dealing with drug dealers that I couldn't actually leave my bedroom-instead of a grand moment of pure fame, dealing with dealers was all I was doing. I showed up to the premiere of the movie, of course, and put on The Matthew Perry Show, but I was bloated and driven by fear of something that I did not understand.
I've always had a dream of going on a talk show and being honest.
Jay Leno: So, how you doing, Matthew?
Me: Man, I just don't know which way is up. I am totally screwed. I am so miserable. I can't get out of bed.
This would have been the perfect time for that.
Four years after The Whole Nine Yards Bruce and I and Kevin shot a sequel (different director this time). If The Whole Nine Yards was the start of my movie stardom, it's fair to say that The Whole Ten Yards was the end.
We shot that second movie in Los Angeles-we were given all too much freedom and it sucked. You can seldom re-create a good thing, and it was true here; the jokes felt stale, the parties even staler. In fact, it was so bad that a while later, I called my agents and said, "I'm still allowed to go to movies though, right?"
When The Whole Nine Yards came out I had been so mired in addiction I could barely leave my room. I had been in a hellhole of despair and demoralization, and my fucked-up mind was slowly dragging my body down with it. Recently it struck me: this type of feeling should have been reserved for when The Whole Ten Yards came out. Anyone in their right mind would have been beyond depressed after that one.
Sometimes, at the end of the night, when the sun was just about to come up and everyone else had gone, and the party was over, Bruce and I would just sit and talk. That's when I saw the real Bruce Willis-a good-hearted man, a caring man, selfless. A wonderful parent. And a wonderful actor. And most important, a good guy. And if he wanted me to be, I would be his friend for life. But as is the way with so many of these things, our paths rarely crossed after that.
I, of course, pray for him every night now.