Tyler Perry Biography

Tyler Perry is the multi-talented filmmaker and actor best known for playing the big, sassy grandma Madea in 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.