When speaking on the Oprah Show, Perry, now 53, revealed his dark beginnings, shocking the host, his close friend, over the brutality of his childhood.

When asked to describe the early years, he answered, “[It was] a living hell.” Tearing up as he watches photos of his life flash across the screen, the man said, “That’s hard for me to look at. I feel like I died as a child.”

Perry then described one beating that remains fresh in his mind.

“To this day, I don’t know why [father] did it. But I remember him cornering me in a room and hitting me with this vacuum cleaner cord. He would just not stop.” he continued, “There are all these welts on [me], the flesh that’s coming from my bone.”

Showing a high degree of resilience, Perry explains that he refused to nurture the beatings and other abuse from his childhood. “…he gave me something to carry that I didn’t want, that I didn’t desire. And thank God, somewhere along the way, I found what you feed will grow in your life, and what you don’t will starve.”

Feeding his success, the star of “Sistas”–a media mogul, actor, writer and producer–is in the exclusive club of the world’s richest entertainers, falling fifth behind George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Oprah and John de Mol.

“I love when people say you come from ‘humble beginnings.’ [It] means you were poor as hell. It also makes success sweeter,” he said when speaking with  Forbes.