AceShowbiz - Actor/director Tyler Perry brought talk show host Oprah Winfrey to tears during an appearance on her program on Wednesday, October 20 when he thanked her for helping turn his life around when he was a confused, abused teenager.

The filmmaker opened up to Oprah about his hellish childhood, during which he was physically abused by his violent father and molested by neighbors. And, at the end of their taped chat, Perry took a moment to thank Winfrey for giving him the spark to find a way out of the hell of his youth.

The "Madea Goes to Jail" director/star told the talk show queen, "I wanna say this to you... I'm going through all of this hell, all of this stuff is happening and nobody's telling me I could fly, nobody's telling me I'm special, nobody's telling me what I can do - and here you are on television. This is what is so miraculous about this moment - I turn on the TV and I see you and you say, 'It's cathartic to start writing'. I didn't even know what cathartic meant."

"I started writing down all of the things that had happened to me but I was using different characters' names. It was a chain reaction... A friend of mine finds them (stories) and says, 'Man, this is a really good play'. On behalf of the millions of people who will never get the chance to sit here and say to you how much you have changed their lives... I wanna say thank you on behalf of all of them and myself."