Gwyneth Paltrow has described her brief romance with Matthew Perry as a summer of creek swims, beers at the local college bar and kisses in long grass. Page Six revisited her Instagram post about it in a look back at the late actor’s dating history. Their summer together came in 1994, just before “Friends” premiered and made him a household name.
Paltrow and Perry met at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. Both were there for most of the summer doing plays. He had already shot the pilot of “Friends,” but it had not aired yet.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Fond Memories
Perry, she wrote, was funny and sweet and fun to be with. She listed what they did together. Driving out to swim in creeks. Drinking beers in the local college bar. Kissing in a field.
Perry had his own version. In his memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” he described a brief makeout session in a closet with Paltrow the summer before “Friends” premiered in 1994. Page Six notes the book came out one year before his death in October 2023, at 54.
Two accounts of the same summer. His fits in a closet. Hers needs a whole field.
Paltrow also remembered him as nervous, hoping his big break was close. She answered that hope herself in two words: it was.
The Magic of Summer Love
Gwyneth Paltrow called it “a magical summer.”
Williamstown is a theatre festival with an end date built in. Actors arrive, rehearse, perform and leave. Romances that start there come with a clock already running, and nobody has to decide whether to end them. September decides.
Perry’s next relationships ran on a different clock entirely. According to Page Six, he started dating Julia Roberts around the time she made a cameo in a 1995 episode of “Friends.” He ended it after two months. In his book he wrote that he had been constantly certain she was going to break up with him, and that he felt she was slumming it by dating him.
He dated Yasmine Bleeth in 1996, after his character Chandler Bing had a crush on her on the show. Then came Neve Campbell, his scene partner in “Three to Tango.” Page Six traces his relationships all the way to a failed engagement with Molly Hurwitz in the 2020s.
Set against that list, the Williamstown summer stands out for what it lacked. No cameras. No fame. No fear of not measuring up, at least none Paltrow saw. Just a funny guy waiting for a phone call about a sitcom.
Paltrow on Drifting Apart From Perry
Paltrow’s post does not describe a breakup. She wrote that they stayed friends for a while until they drifted apart, and that she was always happy to see him when she did.
Drifting is the quietest way two people stop being in each other’s lives. No fight. No statement. Paltrow’s career took off, Perry’s took off, and the summer stayed a summer.
Her post holds no regret about how it ended and no claim that it should have become more. Nostalgia usually comes edited, softened by the years. What makes her account land is how little she asks of it. Creeks, beer, grass, a nervous young actor. She remembers the summer as complete on its own terms.
Perry spent much of his memoir writing about wanting to find the one, and about the loves that got away from him. The Roberts chapter is about feeling unworthy. The Paltrow memory, from her side at least, carries none of that weight. Someone thought he was funny and sweet, and said so decades later in public.
Before “Friends” made him famous, Gwyneth Paltrow knew Matthew Perry. She remembered him as the man in the field, not the man on the poster.
He got his break. They drifted.
Sources: Page Six
