Actors Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey and Mindy Kaling of A WRINKLE IN TIME took part today in the Walt Disney Studios live action presentation at Disney's D23 EXPO.
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TV personality Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey, and director Ava DuVernay celebrate The 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards with Moet & Chandon at The Beverly Hilton Hotel.
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In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Oprah Winfrey accepts the 2018 Cecil B. DeMille Award during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel.
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In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Oprah Winfrey accepts the 2018 Cecil B. DeMille Award speaks onstage during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton.
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Oprah Winfrey talks to an audience about the importance of voting and her support of Georgia Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams during a town hall-style event at the Cobb Civic Center.
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Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in the world that was achieved in 2003.
America's first lady of talk shows, Oprah Gail Winfrey, is well known for surpassing her competition to become the most watched daytime show host on television. Her natural style with guests and audiences on the Oprah Winfrey Show earned her widespread adoration, as well as did her own production company.
Background
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey on an isolated farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954. Her name was supposed to be Orpah, from the Bible, but because of the difficulty of spelling and pronunciation, she was known as Oprah almost from birth. Winfrey's unmarried parents separated soon after she was born and left her in the care of her maternal grandmother on the farm.
Winfrey made friends with the farm animals and, under the strict guidance of her grandmother, she learned to read at two and a half years old. She addressed her church congregation about "when Jesus rose on Easter Day" when she was two years old. Then Winfrey skipped kindergarten after writing a note to her teacher on the first day of school saying she belonged in the first grade. She was promoted to third grade after that year.
Her career as a young speaker continued with poetry readings at African American social clubs and church teas. At 12 years old, while staying with her father in Nashville, she earned $500 for a speech at a church. She knew then that she wanted to be "paid to talk."
Winfrey has stated she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first announced to her viewers on a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse. When Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, they refused to accept what she had said. Winfrey once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well.
At 13, after suffering years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home. When she was 14, she became pregnant but her son was born prematurely and died shortly after birth. Winfrey later stated she felt betrayed by the family member who had sold the story of her son to the National Enquirer in 1990.
Education
Winfrey studied at Lincoln High School; but after early success in the Upward Bound program, she was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School, where she says her poverty was constantly rubbed in her face as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families. She began to steal money from her mother in an effort to keep up with her free-spending peers, to lie to and argue with her, and to go out with older boys.
Her mother tried to send her to a detention center only to discover there was no room; so she sent her troubled daughter to live with her father in Nashville.
Winfrey said her father saved her life. He was very strict and provided her with guidance, structure, rules, and books. He required his daughter to complete weekly book reports, and she went without dinner until she learned five new vocabulary words each day.
She became an excellent student, participating as well in the drama club, debate club, and student council. In an Elks Club oratorical contest, she won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University. The following year she was invited to a White House Conference on Youth. Winfrey was crowned Miss Fire Prevention by WVOL, a local Nashville radio station, and was hired by that station to read afternoon newscasts.
During her freshman year at Tennessee State University, Winfrey became Miss Black Nashville and Miss Tennessee. The Nashville CBS affiliate offered her a job; Winfrey turned it down twice, but finally took the advice of a speech teacher, who reminded her that job offers from CBS were "the reason people go to college." Now seen each evening on WTVFTV, Winfrey was Nashville's first African American female co-anchor of the evening news. She was 19 years old and still a sophomore in college.
In 1976 Oprah went to Baltimore to become a reporter and co-anchor at ABC affiliate WJZ-TV. The station sent her to New York for a beauty overhaul, which Winfrey attributes to her assistant news director's attempt to "make her Puerto Rican" and from an incident when she was told her "hair's too thick, nose is too wide, and chin's too big." The New York salon only made things worse by giving her a bad permanent, leaving her temporarily bald and depressed. Winfrey comforted herself with food; so began the weight problem that became so much a part of her persona.
In 1977 WJZ-TV scheduled her to do the local news updates, called cut-ins, during Good Morning, America, and soon she was moved to the morning talk show Baltimore Is Talking with co-host Richard Sher. After seven years on the show, the general manager of WLS-TV, ABC's Chicago affiliate, saw Winfrey in an audition tape sent in by her producer, Debra DiMaio. At the time her ratings in Baltimore were better than Phil Donahue's, and she and DiMaio were hired.
Winfrey moved to Chicago in January 1984 and took over as anchor on A. M. Chicago, a morning talk show which was consistently last in the ratings. She changed the emphasis of the show from traditional women's issues to current and controversial topics, and after one month the show was even with Donahue's program. Three months later it had inched ahead. In September 1985 the program, renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show, was expanded to one hour. Consequently, Donahue moved to New York.
One of the reasons her show became so successful was she decided against using stifling prepared scripts. She refused to research her topics, and, in her own words, she "wings it" in order to carry on normal conversations with her guests. It succeeds because of her sharp personality and quick wit.
In 1985 Quincy Jones saw Winfrey on television and thought she would make a fine actress in a movie he was co-producing with director Stephen Spielberg. The film was based on the Alice Walker novel The Color Purple. Her only acting experience until then had been in a one-woman show, The History of Black Women Through Drama and Song, which she performed during an African American theater festival in 1978.
Winfrey was cast as Sofia, a proud, assertive woman whose spirit is broken by neither an abusive husband nor white authorities. Critics praised her performance, and she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress.
In 1986 she appeared in Jerrold Freedman's film of Richard Wright's Native Son, playing the crucial role of Bigger Thomas' mother. The film was not as well received as The Color Purple, and critics considered Winfrey's performance overly sentimental.
The popularity of Winfrey's show skyrocketed after the success of The Color Purple, and in September 1985 the distributor King World bought the syndication rights to air the program in 138 cities, a record for the first-time syndication. That year, although Donahue was being aired on 200 stations, Winfrey won her time slot by 31 percent, drew twice the Chicago audience as Donahue, and carried the top ten markets in the United States.
The Oprah Winfrey Show featured such topics and guests as a group of nudists without clothing in the studio (with only their faces shown), a live birth, white supremacists, transsexuals, pet death, gorgeous men, well-dressed women, and Winfrey's own struggle with her weight and coming to terms with the abuse she endured as a child. She holds interviewees' hands during difficult discussions and often breaks into tears right along with them. One show's topic was incest, during which she revealed to her audience she had been raped by a cousin when she was nine years old.
She once taped a show with an all-white audience in Forsyth County, Georgia, where no African American had lived since 1912. This program was prompted after an incident on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. 's birthday, when 20,000 people marched in Forsyth County to protest racism after the Ku Klux Klan had broken up a previous civil rights march in that town. Another program featured a man who had contracted AIDS and as a result had been harassed, beaten, jailed, and run out of his hometown. The studio audience was made up of the residents of that town.
Winfrey formed her own production company, Harpo, Inc., in August 1986 in order to produce the topics that she wanted to see produced, including the television drama miniseries based on Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, in which Winfrey was featured, along with Cicely Tyson, Robin Givens, Olivia Cole, Jackee, Paula Kelly, and Lynn Whitfield. The miniseries aired in March 1989, and a regular series called Brewster Place, also starring Winfrey, debuted on ABC in May 1990. Winfrey also owned the screen rights to Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane's autobiographical book about growing up under apartheid in South Africa, as well as Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.
In September 1996 Winfrey started an on-air reading club. For 10 years publishers had watched as self-help, inspirational, and celebrity titles rose to best-seller status on the tides of telegenic emotion flooding each day across the screens of Winfrey's 14 million American viewers. Think of Simple Abundance, The Soul's Code, Don't Block the Blessings, Down in the Garden, and Winfrey's own Make the Connection, written with Bob Greene. They all received their sales starts because of Winfrey's reading club. The book club has taken her power to sell books to a different level. On September 17 Winfrey stood up in an evangelist mode and announced she wanted ''to get the country reading." She told her adoring fans to hasten to the stores to buy the book she had chosen. They would then discuss it together on the air the following month.
The initial reaction was astonishing. The Deep End of the Ocean had generated significant sales for a first novel; 68,000 copies had gone into the stores since June. But between the last week in August, when Winfrey told her plans to the publisher, and the September on-air announcement, Viking printed 90,000 more. By the time the discussion was broadcast on October 18, there were 750,000 copies in print. The book became a number one best-seller, and another 100,000 were printed before February 1997.
The club ensured Winfrey as the most powerful book marketer in the United States. She sends more people to bookstores than morning news programs, other daytime shows, evening magazines, radio shows, print reviews and feature articles combined. As of May 1997, Make the Connection was rated number nine on the New York Times Best Seller List.
On April 30, 1997, Winfrey appeared in the role of a therapist on a controversial episode of the sitcom Ellen, in which the show's character reveals her homosexuality. The controversey deepened when the show's star, comedian Ellen DeGeneres, announced that she herself was a lesbian. As a result, rumors quickly spread questioning Winfrey's sexuality. Distressed by the rumors, Winfrey issued a statement declaring that she is heterosexual.
Although one of the wealthiest women in America and the highest paid entertainer in the world, Winfrey has made generous contributions to charitable organizations and institutions such as Morehouse College, the Harold Washington Library, The United Negro College Fund, and Tennesse State University.
Winfrey lives in a condominium on Chicago's Gold Coast and owns a 162-acre farm in Indiana. She spends four nights a week lecturing for free at churches, shelters, and youth organizations. Winfrey also spends two Saturdays a month with the Little Sisters program she set up at Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project.
Oprah was raised a Baptist. She was quoted as saying: "I have a church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything."
Politics
According to Oprah, she is mostly apolitical and is registered as an Independent, however, on some issues, she has expressed political views. In 1991 the tragic story of a four-year-old Chicago girl's molestation and murder prompted Winfrey, as a former abuse victim, "to take a stand for the children of this country," she explained in People. With the help of former Illinois governor James Thompson, she proposed federal child protection legislation designed to keep nationwide records on convicted child abusers. In addition, Winfrey pursued a ruling that would guarantee strict sentencing of individuals convicted of child abuse.
When it came to the Iraq War, Winfrey was actually far more notable for airing programs that dove into the opposition to the war prior to its outbreak. She held a two-day special to explore the negative implications on Iraq, and some speculated that the Bush administration held a press conference during one of Winfrey's broadcasts to counter the programming.
Winfrey endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, the first time she endorsed a political candidate running for office. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007, at her Santa Barbara estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina, event on December 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of 2007.
Additionally, Winfrey has supported a handful of major Democratic candidates and endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2013, Winfrey hosted a fundraiser for then-Newark Mayor Cory Booker during his initial Senate bid.
In 2018, Winfrey began canvassing door-to-door for Georgia gubernatorial Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams.
Views
Studies have shown that positive thinking can produce beneficial results for many people, including less stress, better coping skills and increased health. Oprah has been a strong proponent of positive thinking and has devoted many of her programs to this topic. “The greatest discovery of all time, ” she said, “is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” Although a person’s situation has a great deal to do with their wellbeing and their state of mind, so does their attitude. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Having an optimistic outlook is useful when working to overcome major obstacles.
Quotations:
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
“You can have it all. Just not all at once.”
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
“True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.”
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
“I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.”
“What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come. ”
“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.”
“I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.”
“Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.”
“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”
“With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.”
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
“I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.”
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Oprah Winfrey's height is 167.6 cm (5 ft 6 in) and her weight is 78 kg (172 lb). She has 11 US shoe size. Her eyes and hair colour is brown.
Quotes from others about the person
"As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche, …There has been no other person in the 20th Century whose convictions and values have impacted the American public in such a significant way… I see her as probably the most powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every medium that she's touched." - Kitty Kelley
"Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope." - Vanity Fair
"She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry." - Howard Rosenberg
"I've got to say, I bow before cultural icons like Oprah, who take things that can be as minor and goofy as an hour worth of TV and turn it into something that is actually something everybody can be talking about." - Tom Hanks
"Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives." - Ava DuVernay
"Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever." - Michael Eric Dyson
"Every 'Oprah Winfrey Show' has about it the aura of Oprah's own life, just as the rituals and sacraments of a religion are suffused with the life of the religion's founder. Above the testimony of Oprah's guests hovers what viewers know about Oprah's experience." - Lee Siegel
Interests
Her hobbies are reading and photography. She also likes to spend time with her dog.
Writers
Her favourite book is "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
Sport & Clubs
Golf, tennis, racquetball
Connections
Winfrey has publicly disclosed that she was raped by a family relative when she was 9 years old. She also disclosed that she gave birth at age 14, and that her child died in infancy. Winfrey has used her personal experience to campaign for support groups to help survivors of sexual abuse.
Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together since 1986. Winfrey believes that the reason she never had children was because her students at South Africa’s Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls were meant to be her daughters.