Actors - Tyler Perry

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	Actors - Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry (born September 13, 1969 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American playwright and actor, whose work plays primarily to African American audiences. Having started writing plays at age 18, Perry took about a decade to establish himself, but ultimately created a successful touring theater company, videos of whose performances were sold on DVD. As of March 2005, the plays had grossed over $75 million in ticket and DVD sales. His first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman
, produced on a budget of under $5 million, became an unexpected hit, prompting widespread discussion among industry watchers about whether middle-class African Americans were simply not being addressed by mainstream Hollywood movies.

The nickname "Madea" of his running character Mabel "Madea" Simmons (a female character played by Perry himself) comes from a Southern African American contraction of the words "my dear." Madea was modeled after an aunt of Perry's who lives in Houston.

In 1992, Perry began, as a series of letters to himself, the work that eventually became the musical I Know I've Been Changed, about adult survivors of child abuse. He saved $12,000, moved to Atlanta in 1992, and tried to stage the play. It was a flop. Over the next six years, Perry struggled in Atlanta, working odd jobs, sometimes homeless, before the play finally had a successful run in 1998, first at the House of Blues and later at the Fox Theater. His following play, a staging of Bishop T.D. Jakes book Woman Thou Art Loosed, was an immediate hit, grossing over $5 million in five months.

Perry is currently writing his first novel: Don't Make a Black Woman Take Her Earrings Off: Madea's Commentaries on Love and Life. On opening weekend, February 24, 2006 Perry's movie version of Madea's Family Reunion
opened at number one with $30 million dollars, more than triple the amount it cost to make.

Films, videos, and plays

I Know I've Been Changed (play, 1992)
Woman Thou Art Loosed
Behind Closed Doors
Madea's Family Reunion
(video 2002, film 2006)
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
(video 2002, film 2005)
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
(video 2002)
Madea's Class Reunion (video 2003)
Meet the Browns
Madea Goes to Jail

Madea's Day Care''

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Actors - Tyler Perry

Films, videos, and plays

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