Matthew Perry departed Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio film after his heart ‘stopped’ for five minutes
The world’s most famous heart patients were stunned on Sunday night when Leonardo DiCaprio’s son announced he was leaving Meryl Streep after five minutes.
Matthew Perry, 42, spent his entire day on a hospital gurney because he had a heart condition that doctors said prevented him from giving the Oscars speech that he had rehearsed the night before.
The actor suffered from a condition called non-compaction, in which his myocardium has a gap in which it naturally separates the two chambers.
His father, the 39-year-old Oscar winner, had never let him watch the film after he had worked out the speech and had been given an hour to prepare.
The director’s representative, Ben Hocke, confirmed that Perry had asked for and been granted five minutes for the speech, but ‘stopped’ his heart for about four.
Meryl Streep, 44, was watching Perry during the speech, and said: ‘This whole situation is so strange.
‘Leonardo asked for five minutes, he even went over the speech.
‘Matthew said to me: “You don’t have eyes now, Meryl.” And that’s fine. He said: “It’s five minutes. I can’t watch.”
‘Then he came out and said it was OK.’
Perry’s heart stopped for four minutes and 15 seconds in an ambulance at the end of his appearance at the Academy Awards, the fifth time he has suffered a cardiac event after a speech at the Academy Awards.
The director’s representative Ben Hocke told the Times that Perry had asked to be allowed to watch the film alone and have a few minutes alone in the ambulance, but the paramedics had insisted that he watch or else he would return to the hospital.
The film director – who has three children – was born with a double aortic arch, a common heart defect.
In February, he had to undergo emergency surgery after suffering a ruptured appendix during a flight home from the Far East