The Torturous Upbringing Of Tyler Perry
Facebook/Tyler PerryTyler Perry was sexually molested by strangers and violently beaten by his father.
A self-made writer-director who has produced a litany of blockbuster films, Tyler Perry is one of the most successful filmmakers alive. The New Orleans native recently even managed to join the small American pantheon of Black billionaires. His graceful presence belies a truly tragic past, however, which nearly prevented him from ever doing so.
Born on Sept. 13, 1969, Emmitt Perry Jr. was so viciously abused by his father that he would describe his life as “a living hell.” He later revealed that he would wake up in fear on a regular basis, uncertain if his father would brutalize him that day or what he could do to avoid it. One afternoon, his father beat him to the bone.
“To this day, I don’t know why he did it,” said Perry. “But I remember him cornering me in a room and hitting me with this vacuum cleaner cord. He would just not stop. There are all these welts on me, the flesh that’s coming from my bone, and I had to wait for him to go to sleep. When he fell asleep, I ran to my aunt’s house.”
Though his aunt picked up a gun and warned Perry’s father never to hurt her nephew again, the abuse didn’t end — nor had it begun there. Perry was five or six years old when an adult male neighbor interrupted his treehouse playtime and reached into his pants. A male nurse and male churchgoer, too, would molest him.
Facebook/Tyler Perry / Wikimedia CommonsTyler Perry survived his daily abuses to become one of America’s few Black billionaires.
“He used God and the Bible against me to justify a lot of the things that were going on,” said Perry. “It was so horrible. And that was my first sexual experience, with this man performing oral sex on me as a boy.”
Another one of his father’s beatings left Perry unconscious for three days. His father had ordered Perry to change his car tires but brutalized him when he failed. Perry wound up attempting suicide by cutting his wrists. He survived and eventually found solace in his mother’s care.
In a testament to his resilience, Perry legally changed his name from Emmitt to Tyler when he was 16 and overcame his distrust of adults. He became a Hollywood icon and even forgave his father — but never forgot his transgressions.
“I think that’s really important to be clear that just because you forgive somebody does not mean that you now want to be around them,” said Perry.
Eminem: Bullied And Abandoned
Wikimedia CommonsEminem (right) in 1998.
When Eminem burst onto the hip-hop scene in 1999, the 26-year-old rapper espoused his love for the craft and came with receipts for the dues he had paid. With bleached blonde hair and a razor-sharp tongue, his image was as shocking as his skills — while his harsh childhood was chronicled truthfully on wax.
Born Marshall Bruce Mathers III on Oct. 17, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the future rapper was abandoned by his father as an infant. His mother Debbie bore a second son by another man who would walk out on the family as well. Mathers’ destitute mother drifted aimlessly before settling in Detroit, Michigan.
“I would change schools two, three times a year,” recalled Mathers. “That was probably the roughest part about it all.”
When he tried to write his father, his letters came back marked return to sender. He was regularly bullied as an outcast and failed to make friends. Classmate DeAngelo Bailey beat him so badly in January 1982 that Mathers was hospitalized for four days and had to relearn how to tie his shoes. Nightmares and anti-social behavior followed.
Mark Weiss/Getty ImagesEminem’s mother Debbie Mathers, who sued him (and settled out of court) for claiming she spent the majority of his childhood on drugs.
On welfare and a chronic bingo gambler, Debbie Mathers often left Mathers with his uncle, Ronnie Polkinghorn. Ronnie introduced Mathers to hip-hop and became a trusted father figure. But he also lived with depression and died by suicide when Mathers was 17 years old. Repeatedly failing ninth grade, Mathers dropped out in hopes of making it as a rapper.
“I found that no matter how bad I was at school, like, and no matter how low my grades might have been at some times, I always was good at English,” he said.
“I just felt like I wanna be able to have all of these words at my disposal, in my vocabulary at all times whenever I need to pull ’em out. You know, somewhere, they’ll be stored, like, locked away.”
He spent years flipping burgers. He was mugged frequently, and the house he shared with his girlfriend was regularly burglarized. Mathers would compete in rap battles and win, but major records labels rejected him because he was white. With a baby on the way and no hope in sight, he attempted suicide.
Then, in 1997, Dr. Dre heard Eminem’s Slim Shady EP and immediately wanted to work with him. Two years later, Eminem released The Slim Shady LP, which catapulted him to stardom. The Christmas before Dre discovered Mathers, he had only $40 to buy his daughter a gift.
