TYLER PERRY

Tyler Perry is an actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was once listed by Forbes Magazine as the highest-paid man in the entertainment industry. Of course, this didn’t come overnight. He has been writing and producing stage plays since the 1990s. He later moved on to developing popular TV programs, including Tyler Perry’s House of Payne. The show was on air for a total of eight seasons, and just months after it ended, he signed a partnership with the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Perry was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, and gives credit to his childhood for inspiring some of his work. He lived in a modest shotgun home, a popular design in the locale, right in between blocks of mansions and housing projects. The juxtaposition between these two very different lifestyles became his metaphor for life, as he once told The New York Times.