'I was proud of him': Maeve Quinlan reveals one of her 'regrets' surrounding Matthew Perry's memoir

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Matthew Perry's ex-girlfriend Maeve Quinlan has shared insights into her romantic relationship and enduring friendship with the late 'Friends' actor.

The 59-year-old actress spoke with Soap Opera Digest about the rapid connection and the deep bond that ensued and also about the regret she had following the release of his memoir 'Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.'

Maeve Quinlan says it took a lot of 'guts and bravery' for Matthew Perry to write his memoir

Speaking about Perry's 2022 book, Quinlan said a friend told her to reach out to the actor upon the release of the memoir. 

"I regret to this day that I did not call Matthew to tell him I was proud of him," she said, adding, "It took a lot of guts and bravery for him to write that book and be so brutally honest."

The memoir focused on the late actor's on and off-screen life and his struggle with addiction.

Quinlan told the outlet that she knows Perry well enough to say that "he didn’t write that book for himself; he wrote that book to selflessly help others get sober by seeing his own difficult journey."

"I hope it helped others. I really do," she told the outlet.

Maeve Quinlan says Matthew Perry was '100 percent sober' when she met him

Recalling the day she met the 'Fools Rush In' actor, Quinlan said she met him in the hallway of their apartment building and he was one year sober at the time.

Sharing that they became quickly "inseparable," Quinlan said Perry "was the guy every guy wanted to hang out with and every girl wanted to date. He was the guy next door."

“He was kind of unsure of himself. He wasn’t, believe it or not, completely confident with girls, even though he dated the likes of Julia Roberts," she added.

Quinlan further spoke about Perry being fully committed to sobriety.

“When Matthew and I embarked on a romantic relationship, he was 100 percent sober and was very open about his previous struggles,” said the actress.

“That was his one fully sober year, and we were practically inseparable. One of the reasons he liked being with me was that I didn’t do drugs," she added.

Emphasizing the significance of experiencing the late actor sober, she said that it was "the greatest gift of all."

Quinlan whose romantic relationship with Perry embarked in 2002 and ended in 2003 shared that the two continued to be good friends.

She described their bond “morphed into eventually and seamlessly just being best friends, like brother and sister.”