Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey

Taking fourth dimension for a hug on Perry's tricked-out tour bus

The director, playwright, and actor is the first black studio mogul in American history—but 14 years ago he was living in his motorcar. Perry sits down with Oprah to talk about his journey from struggling artist to superstar.

It doesn't surprise me that Tyler Perry and I accept become shut friends in recent years. At that place's a similarity in our paths: Each of u.s. has been on a journeying that can simply be called a phenomenon.

Tyler, 41, grew upward in New Orleans, in a physically abusive home. Outside the dwelling house he was besides sexually abused, as he recently revealed on my show. The trauma left him dislocated and aroused—one especially "nasty" burst got him kicked out of high school—only he establish an outlet in writing almost his life.

In 1992 Tyler moved to Atlanta with the dream of staging his first play. When that effort failed (and failed, and failed, six times over), he was left homeless, disheartened, and broke—but non cleaved. He kept on pursuing his dream, and in 1998 it finally took flying, when hundreds of mostly African-American fans lined up to purchase tickets for the seventh staging of the show he'd devoted his life to, I Know I've Been Changed.

Since then millions of people have turned out to see Tyler'south work. His first motion picture was 2005's Diary of a Mad Black Adult female, adjusted from his 2001 play and featuring his virtually famous character, the outspoken, gun-toting, 66 grandmother, Madea. After his second film, Madea's Family Reunion, he opened Tyler Perry Studios, in Atlanta, and went on to direct and produce seven other movies and create two successful TBS shows, Tyler Perry's Firm of Payne and Run across the Browns. Now he's pushing his self-honed directorial talents to a new high with a drama that debuted in early November: For Colored Girls, based on Ntozake Shange's 1975 play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. When I visited him on the set last year, he was in his element, and I loved watching him. Information technology fabricated me so proud to run across the respect anybody had for him—there was a lot of "Mr. Perry, sir" going on.

I saturday downwardly with Tyler on a rainy Sunday morning last September. He was in Washington, D.C., to perform in Madea'southward Big Happy Family, and we met up in a parking lot, in his favorite place to unwind on the road: a double-wide mahogany-paneled bus, complete with kitchen, sitting room, ii bathrooms, and bedroom. "This is my domicile away from home," he told me. "I dear having this bed. And now I don't have to worry about getting bedbugs when I travel, 'cause I have my ain mattress!"

The fact that Tyler'southward piece of work began with a play he scribbled in a notebook—and that he has grown it into such a powerful bond with so many millions—even so blows me away. When I'm near him, I accept the same feel I had dorsum when I first went to 1 of his stage productions: I leave feeling more connected to others, similar I simply came from church.

First reading Oprah's interview with Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry as a child

Celebrating Christmas in New Orleans at age six, 1975

Oprah: This effect of the magazine is dedicated to miracles. I love the idea considering I recollect my whole life is a phenomenon, and I wonder if you think yours is also.

Tyler Perry: I know it is. In that location are a lot of people who have dreams, goals, and hopes, only in that location aren't a lot who go to see them realized.

O: What'due south your definition of a phenomenon?

TP: A prayer answered. I remember being a kid and praying in the hell of my business firm to have somebody dear me and somebody that I could dear.

O: Did yous ever feel loved, growing upwards?

TP: I knew that love was around. I truly believe my mother loved me. But feeling it all the time? I didn't.

O: Last twelvemonth you caused quite a stir when y'all wrote on your Web site nearly your extensive abuse equally a kid. What made you lot do that?

TP: My intention was to free myself. My mother was very ill at the fourth dimension. I was told she had only a month or and so to alive, which turned out to be truthful. And I'd but turned forty. I was frustrated with so much in my life. I had been conveying and then much heaviness for then long and trying to smile my way through it. It was cathartic to write things down. That'due south what I exercise when I need liberty from something. Because it's hard to keep grin. Even when my mother was well, information technology was hard to get home and sit with my begetter and endeavour to smile. It didn't matter that I was 40; I still felt so much fear around him.

O: What was life like for you with your father?

TP: My father was a homo who didn't know his parents. When he was 2 years old, he was constitute in a drainage canal by a white man and brought to a 14-year-erstwhile black girl chosen May to be raised. This girl's parents merely knew to beat her, so what she knew was to beat my father. Beat, humiliate, ridicule, all his life. Then this is what I was born into. I didn't understand it for a very long time—why so much disdain and hatred. Information technology wasn't until I got older and my female parent and I had some conversations that I started to become where his acrimony came from. And that it was his outcome, that I didn't ain whatever of it.

O: When you're a little boy, you don't know that.

TP: Y'all don't know information technology. I think almost the kid I was, the tremendous debt I owe him at present. At that place wasn't anybody there to protect him or make sure he was okay, just he made it through. He died to give nascence to me.

O: Oh, that makes me want to cry!

TP: And me, too, when I say it, merely information technology's and then true. I experience like he had to endure so much then that I could be here.

O: What would your father do to you?

TP: Well, I hated the nutrient that was in the house with a passion. Maybe it was merely disgusting to me because I didn't like seeing dead animals lying on the table—raccoons and squirrels.

O: And possums. That was in my grandmother's business firm, likewise. Nosotros were country folk.

TP: Those eyeballs looking at yous. I wouldn't consume that food. Which meant that I was e'er hungry. But my father knew I loved cookies, so he would buy them and put them on summit of the fridge and wait for me to go get them. And then he would beat out me.

O: What's the worst thing he did to y'all?

TP: I don't think I allowed myself to unmarried out one moment. He would scream at me, "You're a impaired motherfucker, you lot got book sense simply you don't have no street sense!" 'Cause he hated the fact that I would read and draw and get straight A's in schoolhouse. But even though he would humiliate me to my face up, I would sometimes hear him talking to the neighbor, telling him what a great child I was. How smart I was. It confused me to no end. That was one of the most agonizing things, because I didn't understand it.

O: I read that he once hitting you with an electrical cord.

TP: Yep. He cornered me in a room one nighttime and I all the same to this day don't know why. I've racked my brain to effigy out, what did I practise? He came in drunk. That was his affair. Friday about 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening, we'd be waiting for him to get home. He'd come in, requite usa our allowance, and and then leave to go get drunk. And as information technology got closer to 10, 11 o'clock, we all became very quiet.

O: Because you knew he was going to come up domicile and raise hell?

TP: He would walk in the door raising consummate hell. Sometimes he would come home in such a rage that he was a totally dissimilar person. Then he'd go on his knees, pray, and get to slumber. The vacuum cleaner cord—that was 1 of those nights. He beat me till the skin was coming off. He was much bigger than me, so I couldn't get away. When he finally went in and did his prayer and lay down, I ran out of the house to my aunt who lived around the corner.

O: That's a slave whipping. I had a couple of those, likewise, growing upward....

TP: Mm-hmm. So I went to my aunt, who is i of those strong black women. She got her gun and came around to the house and put it up to his head. Her husband had to come accept the pistol from her. And she told my mother then, "Wherever you go, yous take this boy with you. Don't y'all go out him with that crazy motherfucker." That'south when I started going to Lane Bryant and beauty salons and everywhere else with my female parent.

Next: Perry opens upwardly about being molested equally a kid

O: I know you had great, deep dearest and affection for your mother. Just what was your feeling about her when you lot were a child? Because you want your mother to stand up for yous.

TP: Children beloved their mothers. Especially with a male child child and his mother, there's a bond that's unbreakable. I love my mother to this solar day. I of the most painful things I always had to do was bury her, realizing that even though I was her hero, I couldn't help her with this last matter. I couldn't help her get ameliorate. All I wanted was to give her everything she wanted. Everything my father didn't give her, everything she never had.

O: Yous were never aroused with her?

TP: Not equally a child. I would never say this if she were live, only there was a time when I was older when I was aroused with her, yeah, sure. Only my love would override that.

O: All correct. Just now, in the midst of all the physical abuse, you were also sexually abused. Was this by a neighbor, a friend of the family, somebody yous knew?

TP: Neighbor, friend of the family unit, all of that. The first time, I was half dozen or 7; it was a guy beyond the street. Nosotros built a birdhouse together and suddenly he's got a hand in my pants.

O: Did you tell everyone?

TP: Didn't tell a soul. But felt completely guilty nearly information technology. Felt betrayed.

O: Mm-hmm. Did information technology happen more than once?

TP: Aye.

O: Did it happen regularly?

TP: No.

Oprah: But you were molested by other people, too?

TP: Yes. One was a woman who lived in the flat complex two doors downwards, when I was about x or 11. And there was a guy in church building.

O: That must have been a lot for you to carry. A lot of injure and anger and expose and confusion and shame. Then how did all of this—all your experiences growing up—prepare y'all for the life y'all're now living? First of all, the aunt who came with the gun—the moment you said that, I thought, "Hither comes Madea!"

TP: Yes. The Bible says that all things work together for the practiced of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. I believe that. Because I've seen it all piece of work. I know for a fact if I had not been built-in to this mother, this father, this family, if I had not been built-in into this state of affairs, then I wouldn't exist hither using my vocalization and my gifts to speak to millions of people.

O: When you left home, did you have this dream to become who you are right at present?

TP: I had watched your testify. This is another thing that could just brand me cry, you sitting here at present. I watched your show and y'all were speaking to me. There was nobody effectually me that told me I could fly. Nobody at school, no teacher, nobody who said, "You're special." But I saw y'all on television and your skin was like mine. And you lot said, "If y'all write things downwards, it's cathartic." So I started writing. And it changed my life.

O: You weren't writing earlier and so?

TP: Never wrote.

O: Wasn't I talking about journaling?

TP: Yes. But I started writing my ain things—using dissimilar characters' names because I didn't desire anybody to know that I had been through this. A friend of mine found it and said, "Tyler, this is a really skilful play." And I thought, "Well, peradventure information technology is." And so that's where information technology started.

O: How old were you then?

TP: Nineteen or twenty.

O: Y'all were still living at dwelling?

TP: Still living at habitation.

O: You didn't get to college.

TP: No. Got kicked out of loftier school before graduation. Only I went back for my GED.

O: And what had you gotten kicked out for?

TP: I was arguing with a counselor. I said some pretty nasty things. You know, after all the abuse, I was a pretty angry person.

O: I was going to say, wouldn't that brand you either angry or then introverted that you lot couldn't part?

TP: It made me both. An angry introvert, which is unsafe.

Next: His darkest moment and the phone call that inverse his outlook on life

O: But so you started to write about your life. And somebody says, "This is pretty adept." Now, lots of people recollect, "There's something special near me," and they wait for something good to happen—and it doesn't. Why you lot?

TP: Because I never stopped chasing it down. I don't think the dreams dice—I think that people surrender. I think it gets too difficult. There were and then many dark days when I wanted to prevarication at that place and dice.

O: You actually considered suicide?

TP: Yes. When the rainbow wasn't plenty.

O: When was this?

TP: Well, it was twice. Once when I was very young—I slit my wrists. And the other time—

O: Whoa. You can't just say "I slit my wrists" and then move on. How one-time were you?

TP: About 11 or 12.

O: And you had to be taken to the hospital?

TP: No, it wasn't that deep, wasn't that bad. I don't know if it was more a weep for help—

O: Well, it was obviously a weep for assist. And when was the second time?

TP: Probably when I was around 22. It was winter and I was living in Atlanta, trying to go a play going. I was carrying a lot of frustration, I was homeless, and I had just scraped together enough money for this pay-by-the-week hotel that was full of crackheads. Every morning all the people who lived in the hotel—information technology was very common cold that winter—would beginning their cars to warm them upwards. And the exhaust would fill my room. The cars would be out there warming up—at least ten, 15 cars—and I would get up and ask them to movement. Merely I got to a point where that morning, I just lay in that location waiting.

O: For the fumes to kill you?

TP: Absolutely.

O: What does that feel like, to want to die?

TP: You feel there's nil better for you.

O: It's the end of hope.

TP: Information technology's the cease of a lot of things.

O: And so this was after you had written the play I Know I've Been Changed and it failed.

TP: Yes. Moved from New Orleans to Atlanta, wrote the show, had all my money tied upwards in it. I had worked selling used cars, I had worked at hotels, I had saved my tax render, I'd saved $12,000 to put this play up, and I thought 1,200 people would see it over a weekend. Thirty people showed up. It was pretty devastating, because to do this, I had to leave the job I had.

O: What was your job?

TP: At the time I was a nib collector. But at that place are at to the lowest degree 40 companies in Atlanta with a record of me working at that place over a period of five or half-dozen years. I was a used machine salesman, shoe-polish boy, bartender, waiter.... And listen, I use all those skills today—I tin pour a mean drink!

O: So you believed that after saving that $12,000, at present you're going to be on your way. Simply the play failed. The end of the dream as you knew information technology.

TP: Not necessarily the end of the dream. I went back to work, started trying to do the show again. And then I got an opportunity to do it and went to my boss and said, "I demand time off." They wouldn't requite it to me, so I had to quit. I tried to do the show once more the following year. It failed again. But in that location was something in me that said, This is what you're supposed to exercise.

O: Fifty-fifty though it had failed twice.

TP: Aye. I stayed the course. I tried it once more the following twelvemonth. Had a job. Lost the job.

O: You failed a third time.

TP: Yes. Then at that place's the rent, machine payment, everything. So I'thou out on the street.

O: That's why you ended upward in the pay-by-the-week hotel.

TP: Yes—when I could afford it. Other than that, I was sleeping in my car. I'd go another chore and fail again. This happened once a yr, from 1992 until 1998.

O: And when did the play finally hit?

TP: March 1998. A few months before that, I had gotten into an argument on the phone with my begetter. He'southward yelling at me, cussing and screaming, and something happened in me. I started proverb things I never idea I'd be able to—things I did not fifty-fifty know were in me. "How dare you? Who do you lot recollect you are? You lot are wrong." It was as if the little boy in me was screaming out everything he'd never been able to say. And my father is silent on the phone because he has never heard this side of me. And at the terminate of information technology, I hear him say, "I love you," which at the age of 27, I had never heard before. I hung upwards the phone and I knew something had changed. My entire source of energy had been ripped from me. From the time I'd left my father'south house until that moment, I had been plugged into negativity. I was plugged into anger to continue moving, to do the play, to work, to get upwards every day. It was based on "Fuck you; I'grand gonna bear witness y'all wrong." But that day, when I finally said those things, I had to find a new source of energy.

O: Before that, you'd been coming from anger.

TP: And wanting to be effectually negativity. I enjoyed being a bill collector considering I could make people miserable. That's why I made so much money—I got to laissez passer on the hurt.

O: Simply after you hung up the phone with your begetter...

TP: It was like a car that runs on diesel fuel and now suddenly diesel doesn't work.

O: Because y'all had released all the energy you lot'd been carrying. Big, big, big.

TP: That took me back to the times when my mother would bring me to church, which took me back to God, which took me back to my religion. And prayer.

Side by side: Tyler talks about his first large success and how the Madea character came to be

O: Then you felt peace?

TP: Instantly. And I think the reason a lot of people don't want to take that kind of confrontation is that once that anger is gone, y'all're faced with, "Exercise I proceed to thrive on the negativity? Or do I make the shift into what is going to work for me at present?" I had to brand that conscious pick.

O: Well, that was a miracle. That was a holy moment for you. What is your human relationship with your male parent now?

TP: It's very respectful. I helped him retire a few years agone. Merely we still can't have a chat, because all I get are tears. Tears and shrugging his shoulders. That'southward about as much emotion as he can requite.

O: So you lot've tried to talk?

TP: I've tried to go as much information as I can, considering I don't know him.

O: I believe in beingness respectful considering that'due south what the Bible says yous're supposed to dOprah: Laurels thy father and thy mother. Just do you hold whatsoever resentment toward him?

TP: I tin't walk up to him and throw my arms effectually him and say, "I love you, let's go line-fishing." Honoring him is doing what he did for me. He took care of me. He made sure we ate, nosotros had shelter. So I give him the things he gave me.

O: Yep. And then after that phone conversation, after you released all that negativity—the adjacent time you did the play, information technology succeeded.

TP: The very adjacent time. March 12, 1998. I had made the choice to exercise this last show. And this time there was a line of people around the corner trying to get in the identify. From that moment on, the houses take been sold out everywhere.

O: What's the most people you've played to in a weekend?

TP: About 55,000.

O: When you first realized that people were showing up, did yous think that was information technology—you'd fabricated it?

TP: No, because and then I was afraid every twenty-four hours that it was going to terminate tomorrow. You lot know the feeling.

O: Yeah, I used to think that aforementioned affair every time someone else came out with a new talk show. Only let's become to Madea. I heard that you originally weren't even going to play her, that it happened by accident. Is that true?

TP: No. I was going to do Madea. The accident was that information technology was supposed to exist a very quick 5-minute scene, just when the atomic number 82 extra didn't evidence up, Madea ended upward onstage the entire time.

O: Do y'all love her?

TP: What she does for people gives me great joy. What she's washed for me, yes. But as far as, you know, actually doing information technology every night, it'due south pretty much a hurting, wearing the fatty suit and talking in that high voice for hours.

O: Let's talk nearly how she came to be. She's a combination of your aunt who came to the house with the gun, and your mother.

TP: Yes. The softer, more than sympathetic side is my female parent. 'Cause I would frequently say, "She will crush the hell out of y'all, then plough effectually and offer yous some pie and a Band-Aid or a ride to the infirmary."

O: How was Madea created?

TP: I take to thank Eddie Potato, 'cause afterwards I saw him exercise the Klumps [in Nutty Professor 2], I said, "I'm going to endeavor my manus at a female person character." It was the brilliance of Eddie Murphy. I need to write him a check. Say thanks.

O: Exercise you remember the exact moment she came to be?

TP: Admittedly. At that place was a sold-out house at the Royal Theater in Chicago, and five minutes earlier the show, I put on the costume and stood at the mirror for the first fourth dimension. I'm saying, Damn, are you really going to do this? And so the bear witness started and I had no choice—they pushed me out onstage. Madea had a cane and she didn't talk very loud and her voice was much deeper and she saturday in one spot the whole fourth dimension. Merely after a while, I finally had to move. And when I moved in that location was laughter. And so I said a joke, and it was funny. I wish I had that first night on tape. It was pretty damn scary. Only at the end, homo, there was a standing ovation.

O: For her?

TP: For the bear witness, for her, for me.

O: Only she got the loudest applause?

TP: Yeah. And I was diddled away. I'thou 66 and a man. I'm thinking, "Who knew?"

O: Who decided that Madea should become a motion-picture show?

TP: I did.

O: You lot weren't scared to make a movie?

TP: No, considering I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I merely saw all those people coming out to the plays.

O: By the time you did that commencement picture show, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, you'd been doing the plays how long?

TP: Eight years on the road.

Next: Tyler talks about taking on iconic material for his new flick and what he wants for his future

Tyler Perry directing Janet Jackson

Directing Janet Jackson on the set of For Colored Girls

O: And for your new movie you lot've taken on an iconic book and play and story, For Colored Girls. Were you lot scared to do that?

TP: Sure. But I bask a challenge.

O: During the process of filming this movie, I think that something happened to you. The difference between doing a serious drama and having done Madea—

TP: It elevated my thinking of what film is. Information technology made me understand that in that location is an art and a style to information technology. But here's the thing: Steven Spielberg got to offset messing effectually with a camera as a kid, and Jason Reitman got his father to help. Me, it took nine films to be ready.

O: You just sort of taught yourself how to exist a director. How did you practise that?

TP: I learned in progress. My kickoff time directing was Madea's Family Reunion, which I cannot spotter.

O: Why not?

TP: Considering I didn't know that the cameras should actually move! The camera is the middle of the audience. Merely it's all a role of learning, and I'one thousand grateful for the journeying, and I'1000 proud of the work—every bit of information technology. In every film I learned something to propel me to the next level. I don't know what else will come up in the future, but For Colored Girls is the accented best that I can exercise at this time.

O: I was talking to somebody the other solar day who was saying that y'all are a performer's director.

TP: Well, first of all, the quotient of acting in this motion-picture show is just top-notch. I don't think information technology gets any improve. You cannot accept Phylicia Rashad, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton—

O: Anika Noni Rose...

TP: Yous cannot have them in a scene together and non wait there to exist sparks.

Oh: The film is a large hazard. The audience that has supported you is used to being able to express mirth every time they go to your movies.

TP: It will be interesting to encounter what happens.

O: Okay. Shifting gears at present: Are you comfortable with your wealth?

TP: I'one thousand comfortable with the wealth. It took me a infinitesimal. 'Cause the offset yr I gave every dime away. There was something in me that felt similar I didn't deserve it.

O: And are you over that now?

TP: You're sitting on my tricked-out bus! I'1000 over that.

O: What about the attention your wealth brings?

TP: That I don't like. I don't like the Forbes list. I too don't need to exist in the biggest hotel and walking through the anteroom and shopping and everybody looking at me. I'd rather just do the show and become live my life privately.

O: Do you recall you're shy?

TP: Until you put me onstage and put me in a state of affairs where I'1000 supposed to perform, yeah. I'm non skilful at all in small crowds.

O: Y'all may be reserved, simply I wouldn't phone call you shy. You'd simply rather be at home past yourself—

TP: With the dogs—

O: —than out at a big glamorous party.

TP: Not going to practice that. I hate information technology with a passion.

O: All right. So why aren't you with someone? I cannot figure that out.

TP: I love existence by myself too much.

O: Maybe you haven't met the right person. Do you recollect it's that?

TP: I keep hearing that.

O: Take you been in love?

TP: I was, a few years ago, with the wrong woman. And information technology was really bad for me and hurtful. Maybe I'm still dealing with that. 'Cause I never cried in a human relationship before.

O: You cried in that relationship?

TP: Yeah.

O: You didn't tell me that. I didn't know y'all were in beloved. I thought it was just that thing in the get-go where it'due south intense, and y'all can't even call it beloved yet 'crusade you oasis't been through enough for it to be love. Are you open now?

TP: I'1000 open to whatsoever God has for me. I really am. Nonetheless it comes.

O: So as we sit down here now with yous looking at how far you've come and where you even so have to go, what is it you know for sure?

TP: What I know across a shadow of a uncertainty is that God is with me. I know that. I know that He's always been with me. It is evident in everything I have endured—and the fact that I made it through with some sanity.

Oprah: Can you encounter the time to come for yourself?

TP: Later on my female parent died, I realized that 1 of the reasons I was always running so hard was that I'd made some promises to her as a child that I was trying to go on. All those years of working and working—a lot of it was for her. Now that she's gone, I've had to reevaluate. So when you ask what's side by side, it makes me take a step back and get, "What practice I want to practice? What's going to make me happy? And practice I want to go along working this hard?" At this point, I'm nonetheless looking for the answers.

Photo: Rob Howard

From the December 2010 event of O, The Oprah Magazine