As an actor, writer, producer, and director of films and stage plays, the New Orleans-born Tyler Perry began his career as a dramatist in 1992. When inspired by Oprah_Winfrey to channel his creativity through writing, Perry put pen to paper as a method of healing the wounds that lingered from a painful childhood. His first production, entitled +I Know I've Been Changed, hit the stage to rapturous reviews in 1997, and following a collaborative period with Bishop T.D. Jakes that resulted in the plays +Woman, Thou Art Loosed and +Behind Closed Doors, Perry flew solo to create cantankerous 68-year-old grandmother Mabel 'Madea' Simmons (whom Perry played, in full drag) in +I Can Do Bad All by Myself around 2000A slew of Madea-based projects were quick to follow, and shortly thereafter Perry joined Grammy Award-winner Kelly_Price for the play +Why Did I Get Married?. His plays garnered countless fans thanks to Perry's trademark practice of releasing them on home video. Throughout this period, many credited Perry with resuscitating (and reinventing) African-American theater; in the process, Perry's first eight plays reportedly earned a cumulative gross of over 75 million dollars in ticket and video sales.Perry didn't fully enter the public spotlight, however, until he cropped up in mid-2005 with the oddball A-lister Diary of a Mad Black Woman, self-adapted from his own hit play. This story of an African-American woman Helen McCarter (Kimberly_Elise) struggling to rebound after a painful separation, whose life is invaded (in more ways than one) by the obnoxious, loudmouthed, chainsaw-wielding (!) Madea, Diary -- a bizarre combination of domestic melodrama, violent, racially-oriented farce, and Christian proselytizing -- understandably left many critics running for the exit, but, of course, ticket buyers prevailed. The film scored with its intended African-American audience and grossed a healthy 50 million dollars (it ranked as number one at the box office during February 2005), leading to an early 2006 sequel, Madea's_Family_Reunion, this one written and directed by Perry. Either because Perry's talent had matured within a year or because the press had grown accustomed to the playwright-cum-filmmaker's defiantly unconventional style, critics were slightly kinder about the sophomore Madea outing, which benefits from finely-felt supporting turns by the legendary Cicely_Tyson and Maya_Angelou. Like its predecessor, Reunion struck box office gold, and even topped Diary's net, reeling in an estimated 63.3 million dollars in international grosses. Perry then scrapped the Madea character for a tertiary cinematic outing, Tyler_Perry's_Daddy's_Little_Girls. This romantic dramedy concerns Monty (Idris_Elba), a financially strapped African-American mechanic who loses custody of his children to his drug-pushing ex-wife, and then falls in love with the beautiful attorney (Gabrielle_Union) whom he hires to get the children back. Currently single, Perry lives on a sprawling ranch outside of Atlanta.Jason Buchanan, Rovi