12 Facts about Matt LeBlanc, the eternal Joey from “Friends”, a star marked by resilience

For many Friends fans, the bumbling and seductive Joey Tribbiani is the favorite character. Something easy to understand, as there are many who identify with the aspiring actor who lives putting his feet in his hands, owner of tremendous self-confidence when it comes to love conquests and always willing to do whatever it takes to help others. friends.

To such characteristics, we can add the undeniable charisma of Matt LeBlanc, the actor behind Joey. He left the middle class life behind to become an icon of worldwide proportions, establishing himself as an example of a loving father and someone who uses the criticism received to work on the best version of himself.

Admirer of Friends to this day, the awesome.club invites you to get to know the details of Matt LeBlanc’s life, even showing how he has been dealing with the criticism of his weight received after the premiere of the special episode Friends: The Reunion, released in May 2021. Come with us!

At the beginning of his career, LeBlanc won several important jobs in the advertising field. Among the commercials starring the actor in the 1980s and remembered to this day are those for Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Doritos and Heinz ketchup. The latter was released in 1987 and shows the actor running down a staircase so as not to miss any of the product. The play won the golden lion at the Cannes Festival.

Until he landed the famous role of Joey, LeBlanc would still have a long way to go through. The year was 1988 when he was hired to play Chuck Bender in the TV series 101. The production told the story of a photojournalist who leaves his job to start teaching at the school where he had studied. The series, however, suffered low ratings and was at the center of controversy, causing only 13 of the 17 episodes produced to air.

But, fortunately, the bad results did not make the heartthrob give up on continuing to invest in his dreams. In the early 1990s, the actor continued to look for opportunities and even participated in series such as A Amor de Família, in which he played opposite Christina Applegate.

In that decade, Matt LeBlanc found in the music video industry a good chance to continue his path to stardom. He was called to act in several productions, such as the music video for the song Walk Away, by Alanis Morissette🇧🇷 In it, the actor appears having fun playing billiards with other boys, but leaves everything behind in order to conquer the singer. Already in Miracle, from Bon JoviLeBlanc is a biker friend of the vocalist, and oozes charm until he manages to get a beautiful girl on his back, all during a wedding party in Mexico.

The partnership with Bon Jovi, by the way, seems to have been very successful, not least because ten years later Matt LeBlanc would be summoned again for another clip of the band, this time for the track Say It Isn’t So. The video shows the star in a relationship beyond explosive, with none other than the top model Claudia Schiffer🇧🇷 LeBlanc can still be seen in the clips for Into the Great Wide Open, by the extinct band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the song Night Moves, recorded by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band.

Despite the commercials and clips he participated in, things weren’t going so well for LeBlanc in the first half of the 90s. only 11 dollars (equivalent to just over R$60 currently) in your bank account. The artist’s financial situation at that time, in fact, was so precarious, that he says he resorted to an unrecommended method to make his own smile more beautiful. Determined to find more opportunities in the entertainment industry, LeBlanc looked for a photographer to take his portraits, but the man soon complained about teeth of the then rookie actor.

According to the star himself revealed in an interview, the photographer suggested that, before the clicks, he looked for a dentist to align his smile. “I replied: ‘what are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘One of your teeth is longer than the other. You should sort this out.’” With little money in his pocket and no health insurance, LeBlanc went to a drugstore, bought nail files and wore out his tooth on his own. Here, it is worth mentioning that you should never try to do anything like this at home, as any procedure of this nature can only be done by a professional.

LeBlanc with Mom Pat Closeman

Another proof of how radically LeBlanc’s life has changed since his role in Friends was the choice he made when it came to spending the first fee he received for the job. Anyone who thinks that the actor rushed to buy something luxurious is wrong: his acquisition was a hot meal for yourself and your mother.

Life really smiled at the protagonist of our post, who in 2021 has an estimated net worth of 80 million dollars (something like R$ 436 million). Not to mention that, only with the reruns of the famous series, he pockets 20 million dollars per year (almost R$ 111 million).

Another detail that few people know is that, on the day of his final audition for the role in Friends, LeBlanc showed up at the designated spot with a big bruised in the nose. He explained the story during the interview with James Corden in the first half of 2021: on the eve of the test, the actor decided to have a fun night out with friends, as a way of getting into the shoes of the character. But LeBlanc exaggerated the dose and, already at his house, ended up suffering a fall and hitting his face in the toilet, earning a nice bruise as a result.

“(Producer) Marta (Kauffman) asked, ‘What happened to your face?’ I told the truth and got the job,” she recalled.

After 236 episodes on Friends, originally aired between 1994 and 2004, the role of Joey Tribbiani led Matt LeBlanc to achieve things he might not even have imagined. In addition to a captive place in the hearts of millions of fans around the world, the actor has been nominated three times for an Emmy, another three for a Golden Globe and once for the SAG Awards.

And it was certainly also thanks to the success of the work that LeBlanc ended up winning other roles, although not all of them were well received by critics. This is the case of Ed: A Freaky Monkey, from 1996, in which he plays baseball player Jack Cooper. Badly regarded by the team and the fans, the character is forced to share accommodation with a chimpanzee, the team’s mascot who later proves to have a talent for the sport. The feature ended up being nominated for the Golden Raspberry, an “award” in reverse granted to the worst movies of the year.

Subsequently, the star participated in productions such as Lost in Space: The Movie, Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels Detonating. After Friends ended, he tried to continue surfing on Joey’s success, even starring in a spin-off with the same name as the character (in Brazil, the title was Vida de Artista). Due to low ratings, however, the series that showed Joey trying to make an acting career in Hollywood was canceled with only two seasons.

In life after Friends, LeBlanc’s most successful work was certainly the Anglo-American series Episodes, in which he plays… himself🇧🇷 The plot of the plot revolves around the remake of a comedy series in which the actor is the directors’ big bet. Well received by critics, the series had five seasons, originally shown between 2011 and 2017. The work done by LeBlanc was so well regarded that he finally achieved something that was missing in his career: a Golden Globe as best actor musical or comic series. It was a tremendous victory for the artist, who proved to be a very resilient person.

Other work started by him in the same period, however, was not so lucky. The series Man With a Plan, launched in 2016 and with LeBlanc as the protagonist and executive producer, was canceled in 2020, after four seasons, garnering less favorable reviews and dealing with budget issues. In the plot, which arrived in Brazil with the title of The Head of Househe lives a family man who is forced to deal with, shall we say, challenging children, after the children’s mother returns to the job market after years of just taking care of the house.

LeBlanc also experimented with other fields, working from 2016 onwards as one of the presenters of the British program Top Gear, dedicated to the automobile universe and which also had Chris Evans as another driver. The partnership between LeBlanc and the production, started from the 23rd season, lasted until 2018. The justification given by the famous to leave the job was the fact that the trips required by the recordings made him spend a lot of time away from the family🇧🇷 And as we will see below, family is extremely important to him.

In 2003, LeBlanc married model Melissa McKnight, but the union only lasted until 2006. Before the separation, the couple had a daughter, named Marina Pearl. Early in life, the girl experienced some health complications. That made the actor extremely worried, to the point of making him give a career break to dedicate himself to the little girl. “I didn’t feel like being funny. There was a lot going on in my personal life,” he said in an interview. Fortunately, the girl’s health has greatly improved over time, and she is now over 15 years old.

LeBlanc has already revealed that her daughter is a big fan of Friends, and that the two stop what they are doing when they see that an episode of the production is being rerun on TV. “She loves to ask me about it. She says, ‘Was that real? Did you really eat that? What did it taste like? Did you eat that off the floor? That’s nasty! You’re so funny, Dad!’” She said. Also according to the actor, when she was younger, Marina had the habit of referring to Friends as “The Joey Tribbiani Show”🇧🇷

Long awaited by fans of the series, the special episode…