(Photo credit: atlantanmagazine.com)
Those are the words of the renowned American actor, writer, producer, and director Tyler Perry. Many know him for his great Madea Movies but there is more to that.
Among his major works and achievements are:
At around 1990, at the age of 22, Tyler financed his musical play 'I Know I've Been Changed' with his $12,000 life savings and was later staged at various theaters.
Despite the musical not picking up as much, he soldiered on, and in 2005, he had sold more than $100 million in tickets and $30 million in videos of his shows. Annually, he had 300 live shows that had a weekly attendance of approximately 35,000 people.
In 2005 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman', one of Perry's most famous films earned $50.6 million at the box-office yet was made with a budget of $50.6 million.
In 2006 he published 'Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life' which won the 2006 Quills Awards for Book of the Year and spent 12 weeks on the New York BestSeller List.
In 2009, 'Madea goes to jail' released on February 20, 2009, the largest opening to date grossed US$41 million.
As of 2011, Tyler Perry's films had grossed over $500million worldwide.
According to Los Angeles; most of his movies open to over $20 million at the box office and he is currently the most successful first African-American who owns a studio.
In 2017, His second Book, 'Higher is Waiting' was listed as number 5 on the New York BestSeller List.
In 2018, his famous film,'Acrimony' featuring Taraji.P.Henson grossed $43.5million worldwide.
'A Fall from Grace' was Tyler's first film to be released by Netflix on January 17, 2020. It was watched by 26 million during its first week.
Tyler's early life was not a bed of roses at all!
He tried to commit suicide so as to escape his father's physical abuse. Some of the sentiments he had to share about his past experience in an interview with Oprah were:
" It was a living hell."
" To this day, I don't know why he did it. (My father). But I remember him cornering me in a room and hitting me with this vacuum cleaner cord. He would just not stop. There were all these welts on, the flesh that's coming from my bone, and I had to wait for him to go to sleep."
"(My father) couldn't get the bolts off the tire because they were rusted, he looked up to me...all I could remember is him tackling me, and I remember holding onto a chain-link fence so tight, my hands are bloody and he is hitting me."
Tyler says he used his imagination to escape all that he underwent and from an in-depth talk with atlantanmagazine.com he seemed not to regret it at all. Look at his response when questioned what advice he would give his 10-year-old self:
"That you’re not weird. You’re going to be OK. All the feelings that you have are normal. And this imagination that allows you to disappear and escape, that’s going to be a good thing in the future for your writing and your work...Looking at my 3-year-old, who is my spitting image, I constantly am saying things to him, but the little boy that I was is hearing that [the things] I never heard from my father. So he’s a healer in that sense, that as I say things to him, as I watch him grow through the years, I am feeling something so different because he’s stitching holes in my soul just by the love I’m giving him."
Despite all that, he is very grateful to his mother who would go with him to church every week and through that, he found solace and contentment. He ended up forgiving his father for all his acts and when questioned why he did so, he said, "I had to. For me."
Tyler Perry's life story is worth writing a book about because, despite the difficulties he has passed through, HE NEVER GAVE UP! He is a role model to many, a mentor to thousands, and a hero to the society at large!