Former Friends star Matt LeBlanc has recently been the subject of a lawsuit by a former manager who has sued him for breach of contract. She claims that he still owes her a big wad of cash for his time on Friends and Joey, as she helped him land the role in the first place. Commission and all that.

She also argued that, despite signing a termination agreement with LeBlanc in 1995, she can’t be held accountable for it because she was “stressed out” at the time.

So LeBlanc hit back, calling his ex-manager mentally unstable - and as such, their contract is null and void. He wants a psychiatric profile done of the manager to see if he’s right.

Guess we’ll see what happens. It does sound a bit weird that a termination agreement shouldn’t count just because you were stressed out, though.

The future Friends star appeared in quite a few commercials in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, acting as the clever, pretty face for a few commercials that - at the time, anyway - were considered quite excellent. Nowadays they look pretty silly.

Take the one below, for example. It’s a 1987 production that has LeBlanc going to get a hot dog from a vendor - but not before he sets a bottle of Heinz ketchup up on the building behind him. Once he gets the hot dog the ketchup slowly drips down from the rooftop and somehow manages to spread itself neatly across his hotdog. He then starts eating and winks at the camera.

Yeeeah. Sure. Apparently it was enjoyed, however, as this particular commercial won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
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But he has made occasional forays into the world of the big screen, and in 1998 he made one particularly memorable one in the movie remake of the old televsion series Lost in Space. In it LeBlanc plays Major Don West, an expert pilot who is forced to travel alongside the Robinson family as they leave the Earth and make for a distant planet when their original pilot is killed.

West is there for two things. One, he’s the action guy. The military man who’s a part of most of the combat scenes and whose job it is to keep things interesting. And, two, he’s the love interest of Judy Robinson (Heather Graham), the eldest daughter of the family, providing that touch of romance all blockbuster movies need.

Unfortunately Lost in Space proved a poor box office draw and was mostly slammed by critics, so it can’t really be counted as a feather in LeBlanc’s acting cap.

Or could it be Joey Tribbiani?

LeBlanc has been playing the part of Joey on Friends (not to mention his own show, Joey) for so long that many people may not actually know his real name. They just know the lady-crazy, lovable simpleton who lives across the hall.

Joey is one of the six friends that make up the Friends gang. The only son growing up with seven sisters, Joey has lived around women his whole life and seems to have a natural charm that allows him to attract females with ease. At the same time, however, he’s also deceptively brain-dead, and much of the show’s humor comes from his utter cluelessness and poor decision making.

Joey works as an actor for a living, and though he has his ups and downs by the end of the show he’s proven relatively successful in his endeavors. He’s back to struggling to get by in Joey, however.

He’s also best friends and, for a long time, roommates with Chandler Bing. Their relationship is arguably the longest lasting on the show, as they do have a tendency to act like an old married couple (a fact that does not go unnoticed by their friends). Some of the show’s funniest moments revolve around Chandler and Joey.

At the time, he blamed the separation on “irreconcilable differences.” When McKnight found that Matt was not interested in reconciliation, she began to suspect LeBlanc was involved with another woman. When confronted about the affair, Matt reportedly told his wife “I don’t love you anymore, I want to be with Andrea.” Andrea Anders played Alex Garrett, Matt’s neighbor, on the short-lived NBC series Joey.

 A friend of theirs said “Matt’s easy going… but he doesn’t handle responsiblity well. Maybe he couldn’t take the pain of a sick baby and his TV show going down the tubes. Andrea gave him a shoulder to cry on.” Andrea also unceremoniously dumped her boyfriend, who had moved with her to Hollywood when she landed the role on Joey. Matt LeBlanc and Andrea Anders have not yet made their relationship public.

LeBlanc then left his wife in January of 2006, and filing for divorce soon after. He cited “irreconcilabe differences” as the reason. Matt LeBlanc and his ex-wife will share custody of their daughter, Marina LeBlanc. The Friends star will provide child support and medical expenses for Marina. Matt’s publicist has said that the divorce was amicable. “They remain… friends”, he said. McKnight’s friends have a different story. “She wanted to do counseling or therapy, but Matt just didn’t want to work it out,” one of them told People magazine.

McKnight then accused Matt LeBlanc of daliances with another woman. Since the divorce, Matt LeBlanc has been reportedly involved with actress Andrea Anders, who played opposite him on the NBC series, Joey. The show followed the career of Joey Tribianni, the loveable goof from Friends. It ran for only 2 seasons before being pulled off the air. Matt LeBlanc has not appeared in anything since.