Following the loss of Matthew Perry, Julia Roberts has shared her recollections of him.

When she reflected on her time with the comedian, the actress had “all good thoughts and feelings.” “It’s heartbreaking to lose someone so young,” Roberts, 56, told Entertainment Tonight. “I think that you know, it just helps all of us to appreciate what we have and to keep going in a positive way as best we can.”

Perry, who died in October at the age of 54, previously said he and Roberts had a “three-month-long courtship” around the time she featured on the Friends episode “The One After the Super Bowl” in 1996. He recalled feet-long faxes filled with loving poetry and presents exchanged between the two. The relationship was cut short due to his low self-esteem.

“Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me,” he wrote in Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. “I was convinced that she was about to end our relationship. Why wouldn’t she? I was insufficient; I could never be sufficient; I was broken, bent, and unlovable. So, rather than go through the anguish of losing her, I ended my relationship with the stunning and great Julia Roberts.”

Despite the breakup, Roberts remembers the Friends cameo warmly. “They were all so welcoming to me as just a kind of one-off character, and it was a really fun time,” she told me.

Perry has always been upfront about his drug struggles and once stated that he would rather be known for making a difference than for his time on television. In his memory, Perry’s family established the Matthew Perry Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to assisting addicts in need.

“I don’t want friends to be the first thing mentioned when I die; I want to help others to be the first thing mentioned.” And I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving it,” he stated on the Q&A with Tom Power in November 2022. “Addiction is simply too powerful for anyone to overcome on their own. But we can knock it down one day at a time if we work together.”