What's Tyler Perry's net worth and how old is he?

NEW Orleans native Tyler Perry is a successful actor and filmmaker, widely known for his iconic Madea character.

Madea is a tough elderly African-American woman, who Perry describes as "exactly the PG version of my mother and my aunt."

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Who is Tyler Perry and how old is he?

Perry, 51, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Willie Maxine Perry and Emmitt Perry Sr.

Perry wrote and produced many stage plays during the 1990s and early 2000s.

He developed several television shows including Tyler Perry's House of Payne, which ran for eight season on TBS.

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Perry created The Haves and the Have Nots for the Oprah Winfrey Network, after landing a multi-year partnership with Winfrey in 2012.

Perry has starred in films such as Star Trek, Alex Cross, Gone Girl, Vice and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

He is widely recognized for the Madea character, which has starred in 11 films since the character debuted in 2005.

What's Tyler Perry's net worth?

In September 2020, the 51-year-old became Hollywood's newest billionaire, Forbes reported.

Forbes estimates Perry has amassed a net worth of more than $1billion.

He's used his wealth to buy homes in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as two planes.

How did Tyler Perry become a billionaire?

According to Forbes, "[Tyler Perry] owns the entirety of his creative output, including more than 1,200 episodes of television, 22 feature films and at least two dozen stage plays, as well as a 330-acre studio lot at the edge of Atlanta’s southern limits.

"He used that control to leverage a deal with ViacomCBS that pays him $150 million a year for new content and gives him an equity stake in BET+, the streaming service it debuted last September," added the outlet.

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What's his real name?

Perry was born Emmitt Perry Jr, after his father Emmitt.

At age 16, he had his first name legally changed from Emmitt to Tyler in an effort to distance himself from his abusive father.

“He had a lot of issues,” Perry told PEOPLE.

“But the thing that helped me get over it and still take care of him today is, I took a moment to find out more about him and his childhood and where he came from, and his was way more horrific than mine.

"So it kind of formed the person that he was," Perry said.

The Hollywood actor learned that Emmitt and his siblings were abandoned as kids and turned over to a 14-year-old girl after being found in a Louisiana drainage canal.

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Perry also learned that Emmitt wasn't his biological father.

“To his credit, we were never hungry, he never left the family, he always brought every dime he made home to my mother,” the filmmaker said.

“So in return for what he did then, I still do the same thing for him even though we don’t have a relationship.”