Tyler Perry

Actor / Filmmaker / Playwright
Date Of Birth:
13 September 1969
Place Of Birth:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Best Known As:
Madea in his film Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Tyler Perry is best known as the big, sassy grandma Madea from a long series of movies, starting with the 2005 film Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005). From his home base in Atlanta, Georgia, Tyler Perry commands a self-made entertainment empire that includes plays, books, TV shows and feature films. He works variously as actor, writer, director and producer, sometimes all at once, and has produced a long stream of successes now well into its second decade. He began his professional career there in community theater in the 1990s as a playwright. Throughout the 1990s Perry staged I Know I've Been Changed, an autobiographical musical that became a national hit by the end of the decade. His other hits on stage include Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I Can Do Bad All By Myself and Meet the Browns, and the merchandising of those performances on DVD made Perry a rich man and a national celebrity, especially among African American audiences. Perry's movies use broad humor -- he's nearly six and a half feet tall and his Madea is an overbearing granny -- and stress the ups and downs of family life. His ever-popular Madea comedies include Madea's Family Reunion (2006), Madea Goes to Jail (2009), A Madea Family Christmas (2013) and A Madea Family Funeral (2019). His other box office hits include Why Did I Get Married? (2006), Meet the Browns (2008), I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009), Gone Girl (as actor only, 2014) and Nobody's Fool (2018). He also publishes books, releases CDs and DVDs, and in 2006 launched a sitcom on cable television, Tyler Perry's House of Payne.
Extra Credit:

Tyler Perry has credited Oprah Winfrey‘s TV show with motivating him to write… “Madea” is a nickname made from a contraction of “Mama Dear” or “Mother Dear.” The character’s actual name is Mabel Simmons… Tyler Perry has a son, Aman, born in 2015. The mother is Perry’s longtime girlfriend, Gelila Bekele.

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