Matthew Perry was forced to drop out of Don’t Look Up after his heart stopped for FIVE MINUTES

Matthew Perry dropped out of the all-star film Don’t Look Up after his heart stopped for five minutes while undergoing surgery.

Perry, 53, recounted having to give up the role in the film in his upcoming memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, where he revealed eight of his ribs were broken by a doctor attempting to revive him on the operating table by performing CPR, according to Rolling Stone. 

The Friends alum was cast as a Republican journalist who shared three scenes with Meryl Streep in what he called ‘the biggest movie I’d gotten ever.’

Matthew Perry was forced to drop out of the all-star film Don’t Look Up after his heart stopped for five minutes while undergoing surgery; pictured 2017

Perry was still grappling with alcohol and opioid addiction at this time, and recalled being on 1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone while filming a group scene with Jonah Hill.

The actor ended up seeking treatment at a luxury rehab in Switzerland during this time and attempted to procure more prescription drugs from doctors by lying of severe stomach pain.

‘In fact, I was OK,’ he recounted. ‘It still felt like I was constantly doing a sit-up — so it was very uncomfortable — but it wasn’t pain.’

While Perry had already been prescribed hydrocodone by doctors at the facility, they ultimately decided to ‘put some kind of weird medical device’ in his back to alleviate the pain. This required Perry to undergo surgery. 

‘The biggest movie I’d gotten ever’: Perry was set to share three scenes with Meryl Streep, who played President Orlean 

On the set: Perry pictured filming a scene for Don’t Look Up in Boston, Massachusetts in 2020 

Perry said he stayed up all night before the procedure taking hydrocodone, and the next day, during surgery, he was given the anesthesia drug propofol.

But his heart ended up stopping for five minutes after the dose was administered.  

‘I was given the shot at 11:00 a.m.,’ the actor recalled. ‘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. 

‘Nothing had been beating’: Perry recalled waking up eleven hours after his heart stopped beating for five minutes and a doctor performed CPR on him 

‘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?’

‘He may have saved my life, but he also broke eight of my ribs,’ he wrote. 

Perry ultimately made the ‘heartbreaking’ decision to drop out of Don’t Look Up as a result of all the pain he was in.

‘Heartbreaking’: Perry ultimately decided to drop out of Don’t Look Up as a result of all the pain he was in 

He never shot any scenes with Meryl, and the only scene he did film ended up not making it into the movie.

Matthew’s eye-opening memoir is set for release on November 1 and sheds light on his battle with addiction.

In his book, he revealed he spent around $9million trying to get sober and recently celebrated 18 months of sobriety.

He also told how Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his drinking and revealed she and the rest of the cast ‘know you’re drinking.’

But he said she was a constant source of support during his recovery, adding: ‘[Aniston] was the one that reached out the most,’ he revealed. ‘I’m really grateful to her for that.’

All-star film: Perry would have appeared in a film also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence