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Left: Tyler Perry | Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for SiriusXM, Right: Tyler Perry in Boo! A Madea Halloween | Lionsgate Films

Tyler Perry really does it all. He’s an actor, a playwright, a comedian, a producer, and one of the most financially successful directors in Hollywood.

In 2011, Forbes listed him as the highest-paid man in the entertainment industry. Celebrity Net Worth later reported that in 2013, he became the only filmmaker in history to have five of his movies open in the No. 1 spot at the box office over the last five years beating out big-name directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, James Cameron, and Quentin Tarantino.

One of the characters featured in many of Perry’s movies who attributed to much of his success is Madea. In October 2018, Perry shocked fans when he announced that he was no longer going to play the famous character he portrayed on the big screen for nearly two decades and thus Madea would be killed off in 2019.

Here’s what we know about Madea’s demise, plus how much what Perry is worth today, and he how he made his massive fortune.

Tyler Perry’s net worth

These days, Perry has a net worth of a whopping $600 million.

He was born in New Orleans in 1969 and as a child suffered abuse at the hands of his father and family friends. Perry then turned to writing as a form of therapy. A series of short stories he put together became the basis for his musical I Know I’ve Been Changed which focuses on topics like child abuse, rape, and faith in God.

Over the next decade, Perry continued to script more plays and developed a large following with an estimated 35,000 people a week attending his stage productions. In 2005, he used the money from his ticket sales to fund his first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. The film went on to gross over $50 million domestically. Perry mostly writes, directs, and produces all of his projects himself and therefore takes home a sizeable amount of the profits.

He also penned the book Don’t Make A Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries On Life And Love, which became a New York Time bestseller, and produced the long-running TBS sitcom Tyler Perry’s House of Payne. In addition, he has acted in a number of films that are not his own including Alex Cross, Gone Girl, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Madea’s demise

As for Madea, Perry revealed that he believes it time to retire her character.

“This is it. It’s time for me to kill that old b**ch. I’m tired!” he told Bevy Smith on her SiriusXM radio show Bevelations, before adding, “I just don’t want to be her age playing her. So, we’re going to say goodbye to her.”

Moviegoers will see the last of the beloved character on the silver screen in A Madea Family Funeral due out on March 1, 2019. She will make her final cameo in a farewell stage tour that is in the works and will also be out in 2019.

Audiences were first introduced to Madea in the 1999 play titled I Can Do Bad All by Myself. The character then appeared in several of Perry’s TV shows and films including Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea’s Family Reunion, Madea Goes to Jail, and Madea’s Witness Protection.

The character was inspired by Perry’s mother, his aunt, and Eddie Murphy’s performance in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.

Read more: Eddie Murphy’s Net Worth and How Much He Pays in Child Support

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