Tyler Perry is a man who believes in honoring those who paved the road before him and sometimes goes even beyond that.
When he had the chance to work with legendary actress Cicely Tyson for a single day in 2007 for his film “Why Did I Get Married,” he knew she had been undercompensated for much of her career’s work.
So he paid her a whopping $1 million.
“This woman had done so many amazing things, but she wasn’t well compensated for it,” Perry told AARP magazine in its latest August/September cover story. “She made $6,000 for ‘Sounder,’ you know? I wanted to make sure she knew that there were people who valued her.”
He said he took care of her financially for the final 15 years of her life. “She was a proud woman, and the only reason I mention this is because she wrote it in her book,” he said. “It makes me feel great that I was in a position to give this incredible woman some security in her latter years.”
Tyson, who died last year at age 97, was 83 at the time she worked with Perry. She was 48 when she received an Oscar nomination for her role in the 1972 film “Sounder,” a film about a strong Black family.
She also appeared in other Perry productions including “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” in 2005 and “A Fall From Grace” in 2020.
Perry, who has a new Netflix film “A Jazzman’s Blues” debuting next month, also named one of his 12 soundstages at Tyler Perry Studios when it opened in 2019 after Tyson. (The 11 others are named after Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Will Smith, Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Diahann Carroll.)
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