Sleeping in his car, then building a studio

Tyler Perry grew up in New Orleans in a difficult household; he has described his father as abusive. His path toward writing began after he watched The Oprah Show, where Oprah Winfrey said that putting thoughts on paper could be cathartic. Perry took that idea seriously and started writing, and in 1992 he wrote a play that he was determined to put on stage.

For the next several years, staging his plays took nearly everything he earned. In a 2009 interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Perry explained that from 1992 to 1998 he put his rent and car payments into his productions and, in his words, rolled the dice one time too many. When he could no longer afford the hotel where he paid by the week, he ended up on the streets and slept in his car. He dated this to about 1996 and 1997 and said it lasted only about three months. He described the experience as character building.

The turning point came in 1998, when he mounted what he regarded as a last chance for the show. He staged it at the House of Blues in Atlanta, a venue of roughly 1,100 seats, and it sold out. That success changed the course of his career and gave him the footing to keep producing his work.

Perry went on to become one of the leading film and television producers in the United States, building a studio business from the theatre work that had once left him sleeping in a car. When he spoke with Larry King, he looked back on the hard years calmly and treated them as part of what shaped him.