LeBlanc’s long vacation

Matt LeBlanc is proud that he spent five years out of work, said Camilla Long in the London Sunday Times. LeBlanc, who played the dim-witted skirt-chaser Joey on Friends, made $100 million over a decade on the hit show; by the end, he and the other cast members were being paid $1.3 million per episode. Was he overpaid? “I love this question,” LeBlanc says, “because I love my answer. If you’re in a position to get the money and you don’t, you’re stupid.” The fortune he made on Friends and the spin-off, Joey, completely changed his life, he says—“my life, my daughter’s life, my grandchild’s life.”

He bought his mother a ranch, and spent time with his family and doing things he felt like doing, none of which involved going to a studio to make TV shows. In fact, LeBlanc took five years off after Joey ended, partly because he went through a divorce, and partly because he was devoted to caring for his young daughter, who was born with a rare brain disorder. She’s doing fine now, but he’s so close to her that he doesn’t want to have any more children, because it might upset her. How does his current girlfriend feel about that? “To be brutally frank,” he says, “I don’t care. Relationships come and go. Children are forever.”

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