American actor, Tyler Perry has become the latest Hollywood billionaire.
Since Perry debuted his filmmaking career career, he has successsfully become an entertainment mogul, operating in different departments of the movie-making industry.
A filmmaking tycoon who acts, writes, directs, and, above all, produces his works, working in both TV and film, Perry has now been able to amass a net worth of a billion dollars.
Below is a list of 3 things you probably didn’t know about Perry:
- He Was A High School Dropout –Perry failed to complete his high school education. He had to take up small jobs to survive. He however earned a GED (an American certificate given to people who pass a test consisting of four core courses in substitute for a high school certificate).
- He Suffered Molestation as a Kid –Perry grew up harbouring trauma from his childhood molestation experiences. He openly disclosed that he was molested four times within the first ten years of his life.
At age 10, he was molested by a friend’s mother; prior to that time, he revealed that he suffered trauma from molestation by three older men.
For a young boy growing up under harsh circumstances at home, molestation was another situation that should have sent him back into his shell for years, but Tyler rose above it.
- His First Production Was a Huge Loss –Perry’s first play was a collation of his personal experiences. He had listened to popular TV personality, Oprah Winfrey on a programme where she mentioned that “writing down personal experiences could be cathartic”. He yielded to Winfrey’s advice which resulted in his first play in 1992, I know I’ve Been Changed.
During the period of preparing for the play, Perry worked a number of odd jobs to raise money for its first staging in Atlanta. He reportedly put all of his $12,000 life savings into the project which sent him into extreme poverty as a result of the loss.
- He Grew-up With an Abusive Father – Perry recounted that he grew-up with a father who believed that the answer to everything was to “beat it out of you”. Thus, he spent his childhood amidst fear, timidity and under what he described as very harsh circumstances.
At one point, the beatings got so bad for Perry that his mom’s sister, Mayola, pointed a gun at his father and told his mother, Willie Maxine, that she better take young Perry with her whenever she left the house on errands from then on. “That’s when I started going to Lane Bryant and beauty salons and everywhere else with my mother,” Perry said in an interview with dear friend Winfrey in 2010 for O magazine.
- Suicide –Perry has attempted to take his own life in the past, once when he was around 12 and again at 22.
Written by Praise Shogbade