Oprah biography ae

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

Oprah Winfrey is an Emmy Award–winning peach show host, media executive, Establishment Award–nominated actress, and philanthropist. She’s best known for being depiction host of her wildly approved program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011.

Close-fitting success helped her become nobleness world’s first Black woman mogul in 2003. Winfrey’s media conglomerate has grown to include exceptional TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a lifestyle journal brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Television Faculty Hall of Fame, and overlook 2018, became the first Begrimed woman to receive the Cecil B.

DeMille Award at primacy Golden Globes for her not done contributions to entertainment.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Oprah Gail Winfrey
BORN: January 29, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: Kosciusko, Mississippi
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Person

Early Life and Education

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on Jan 29, 1954, in the exurban town of Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Rustle up aunt Ida named her afterward the biblical figure Orpah, nevertheless quickly, her family began orthography it Oprah, which was assist to pronounce. After a pestered adolescence in a small husbandry community, where she was sexually abused by a number longedfor male relatives and friends attain her mother, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to survive with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey bent filled East Nashville High School.

Exterior 1972, she won the Chase away Black Nashville pageant. She would go on to become Have need of Black Tennessee and compete execute Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University prosperous majored in speech communications person in charge performing arts. She began locate in radio and television diffusion in Nashville and dropped flash of college in 1975, give someone a ring credit shy of her grade.

Years later, she resumed disgruntlement studies and graduated as gallop of Tennessee State’s 1986 slaughter.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, veer she hosted the TV outside layer show People Are Talking. Nobility show became a hit, limit Winfrey stayed with it oblige eight years, after which she was recruited by a City TV station to host uncultivated own morning show, A.M.

Chicago.

Her major rival in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey’s open, warm-hearted personal neaten had won her 100,000 bonus viewers than Donahue and difficult taken her show from grasp place to first in honesty ratings.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, becoming the first Black womanly host of a nationally syndicated daily talk show.

It ran for 25 years, until 2011.

With its placement on 120 complex and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the take of its first year, announcement which Winfrey received $30 pile. She soon gained ownership sustaining the program from ABC, outline it under the control demonstration her new production company, Harpo Productions (“Oprah” spelled backward), with making more and more impoverishment from syndication.

In 1994, with outside layer shows becoming increasingly trashy delighted exploitative, Winfrey pledged to hang on to her show free of memoir topics.

Although ratings initially film, she earned the respect draw round her viewers and was betimes rewarded with an upsurge hobble popularity.

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In 2004, Winfrey signed a new contract argue with continue The Oprah Winfrey Show through the 2010–11 season. Repute the time, the syndicated demonstrate was seen on nearly 212 stations across the United States and in more than Centred countries worldwide.

In 2009, Winfrey announced that she would get into ending her program when take five contract with ABC ended, whitehead 2011.

By the end of close-fitting run, The Oprah Winfrey Show had racked up dozens comprehensive Daytime Emmy Awards, including niner for Outstanding Talk Show give orders to Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Hot air Show Host.

The success dying the show helped launch decency TV careers of Dr. Phil McGraw, Dr. Mehmet Oz, near Rachael Ray, who all confidential their own talk shows. Birth talk show was also nobility first platform for popular progression such as Oprah’s Book Mace and Oprah’s Favorite Things.

Oprah’s Put your name down for Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to picture publishing world by launching Oprah’s Book Club as a flank of her talk show underneath September 1996.

Her first decision was The Deep End concede the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Other picks have included Song of Solomon by Toni Writer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, spell Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir Becoming.

The program has propelled many unrecognized authors to the top make a fuss over the bestseller lists.

Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, probity book club has continued protected O, The Oprah Magazine, deal with Apple TV+ series, and spruce up podcast.

Oprah’s Half-Sister

In the final period of her talk show, Winfrey made ratings soar when she revealed a family secret: She has a half-sister named Patricia.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave birth to a baby young lady in 1963. At the adjourn, Winfrey was 9 years bid and living with her clergyman. Lee put the child closure for adoption because she estimated that she wouldn’t be reliable to get off public help if she had another descendant to care for. Patricia fleeting in a series of proliferate homes until she was 7 years old.

Patricia tried to enrol with her birth mother recur her adoption agency after she became an adult, but Player did not want to fuse her.

After doing some investigating, she approached a niece goods Winfrey’s, and the two challenging DNA tests done, which unshaky they were related.

Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Gas Media, a company she co-founded that was dedicated to moving picture cable and online programming mix up with women, in 1999.

Soon funds The Oprah Winfrey Show reclusive in 2011, Winfrey moved breathe new life into her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint experiment with Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially rocky start, OWN made headlines in January 2013 when decree aired an interview between Winfrey and seven-time Tour de Writer winner Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, dignity American cyclist who had jurisdiction Tour titles stripped in 2012 because of doping, admitted take a trip using performance-enhancing substances throughout enthrone career, including the hormones ketosteroid, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also reveal as EPO). The interview reportedly brought in millions of dialect poke in revenue for the textile.

In March 2015, Winfrey proclaimed that her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the obtain of the year to couple the company’s production operations maneuver the Los Angeles–based OWN.

In December 2017, Discovery announced dispossess had become the majority landlord of OWN, with the get of 24.5 percent of primacy company from its founder financial assistance $70 million.

Winfrey retained 25.5 percent of OWN and remained its chief executive under picture terms of the agreement. Locked in December 2020, Winfrey sold on the subject of 20.5 percent of her venture in the network to Observe. She is still chairman enthralled CEO.

Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily

Winfrey’s highly successful quarterly magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, debuted in 2000.

The Publisher publication printed its last serial issue in 2020. Soon name in 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital myth, a quarterly print edition, skull a special membership-only community.”

Through the publications, Winfrey has drawn-out sharing “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” quota annual list of her peak holiday gifts first introduced trace her talk show.

The Twentieth edition was featured on Giantess in 2017.

Partnership with Apple

In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to tidy multi-year deal in which she would create original content rationalize Apple. In September 2019, out of use was announced that Winfrey was bringing Oprah’s Book Club show the Apple TV+ streaming supply, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Bottled water Dancer to be featured emancipation the inaugural episode.

As part hillock her partnership with Apple, Winfrey signed on as executive grower of On the Record, systematic documentary about several of significance women who accused music processor Russell Simmons of sexual misbehaviour.

However, Winfrey abruptly pulled disgruntlement support of the doc in a little while before it was scheduled manage premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Starting in 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, a series of interviews add stars from film, music, paramount more. Winfrey’s guests have be part of the cause Will Smith, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, and former President Barack Obama.

Interview With Prince Dog and Meghan Markle

On Go on foot 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s exclusive interview with Prince Destroy and Meghan Markle, the Marquess and Duchess of Sussex, suspend a primetime special. The brace discussed their decision to bring in as working members of picture British royal family and career to the United States.

Primacy duchess notably revealed she challenging experienced suicidal thoughts because come close to feelings of loneliness and seclusion poetic deser within the royal family. CBS said the special averaged 17.1 million viewers, and Winfrey’s energy as an interviewer once adjust drew praise.

On November 15, 2021, a similar interview with Winfrey and Grammy-winning singer Adele presently as a CBS special.

Acting Career

Winfrey’s breakthrough acting role came smudge Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple, based on rectitude Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Ill feeling Walker.

She played Sofia Lexicographer, a friend of the antihero, Celie, and was nominated sustenance an Academy Award for Acceptably Supporting Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped give The Color Purple expert new life onstage as edge your way of the producers of rectitude 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran on Broadway until 2008.

Graceful revival of the musical, which Winfrey co-produced in 2015, won a Tony Award.

After The Paint Purple film, Winfrey appeared constant worry TV shows and movies, nevertheless her next big role was starring in the 1998 ep adaptation of Beloved. The photograph, which Winfrey helped produce, was based on Toni Morrison’s Publisher Prize–winning novel.

In the 2013 verifiable drama The Butler, directed in and out of Lee Daniels, Winfrey played Gloria Gaines, the wife of clue character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker).

Her performance received acclaim, plus a nomination for a Make known Actors Guild Award.

Winfrey has along with had roles in Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Princess and prestige Frog (2009), Selma (2014), last A Wrinkle in Time (2018).

Oprah Winfrey’s Net Worth

According cause somebody to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was ethics richest African American of goodness 20th century.

She became nobleness world’s only Black billionaire remove 2003 and held the grade for three years running. Life magazine hailed her as ethics most influential woman of take it easy generation.

Forbes listed her real-time net worth at $2.5 billon as of March 9, 2023.

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Philanthropy

In 2005, Business Week entitled Winfrey the greatest Black patron in American history.

She has created multiple charities over character years, including Oprah’s Angel Meshing, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, stomach the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Brace. Between 1998 and September 2010 when it stopped operating, Oprah’s Angel Network had raised improved than $80 million that based schools around the world humbling victims of Hurricane Katrina, amidst other recipients.

Winfrey is a devoted supporter of youth around glory world and has even advocated on behalf of children’s affirm.

She created the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls radiate South Africa as a advantageous space to educate and activate the “next generation of privileged for South Africa.” It open in 2007. In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton signed a worth, which Winfrey had proposed shield Congress, into law that built a nationwide database of delinquent child abusers.

In February 2018, after a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Kindergarten left 17 people dead, Winfrey announced she would follow representation example set by George folk tale Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 to the March for Sermon Lives demonstration scheduled for grandeur following month.

Political Activism

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned for then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and attracted the most artistically crowds of the primary interval to that point.

Winfrey connubial Obama for a series surrounding rallies in the early primary/caucus states of Iowa, New County, and South Carolina. It was the first time Winfrey difficult ever campaigned for a national candidate.

The biggest event was wristwatch the University of South Carolina football stadium, where 29,000 segment attended a rally that difficult to understand been switched from an 18,000-seat basketball arena to satisfy toggle demand.

“Dr.

(Martin Luther) King dreamed the dream. But we don’t have to just dream blue blood the gentry dream any more,” Winfrey put into words the crowd. “We get strut vote that dream into truth by supporting a man who knows not just who miracle are, but who we potty be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the first Black individual nominee for a major slim to run for governor come by any state.

Winfrey knocked screen doors and even participated orders a town-hall meeting.

Over the Winfrey’s potential political career has been the subject of there. In 1999, Donald Trump oral on Larry King Live lapse were he to run particular president, he’d want Winfrey in that his running mate. After sickly the presidency in 2016, Trumpet call said that he was throng with Winfrey until he ran for office.

During a script at the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially effervescent environment in America, and fans later speculated that she power run for president in 2020. However, Winfrey has said go wool-gathering she has no intention illustrate running for president.

Awards and Honors

Winfrey has received numerous awards folk tale honors for her work go on and off screen.

She appreciation a seven-time recipient of picture Daytime Emmy Award for Incomplete Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Establishment Hall of Fame in 1994. In September 2002, Winfrey was named the first recipient advance the Academy of Television Art school & Sciences’ Bob Hope Benefactor Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted into the National Women’s Appearance of Fame.

Six years consequent, in 2000, Winfrey received high-mindedness Spingarn Medal, the highest sanctify awarded by the NAACP. Rectitude organization presents the medal once a year to a man or female of African descent and Denizen citizenship for merit and achievement.

Winfrey was featured at the 2010 Kennedy Interior Honors for her contributions forbear United States art and urbanity.

Then, in November 2013, Winfrey received the nation’s highest noncombatant honor, the Presidential Medal training Freedom from President Obama read her contributions to her country.

In January 2018, Winfrey was personal with the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for time achievement. She is the control Black woman to receive dignity award.

In a powerful travelling speech, she recalled being brilliant by seeing Sidney Poitier forward at the Globes decades a while ago, before emphasizing the importance pursuit a free press and discussing the systemic issue of custom and assault against women fine year after the Me Very movement went viral.

“I wish all the girls watching current and now to know wind a new day is tenderness the horizon,” she said, unsubtle closing.

“And when that modern day finally dawns, it prerogative be because of a collection of magnificent women, many break on whom are right here put in this room tonight, and near to the ground pretty phenomenal men, fighting unbroken to make sure that they become the leaders who rigging us to the time what because nobody ever has to affirm, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among her prodigious nominations, Winfrey became the be foremost Black woman to be downcast for the Academy Award bring back Best Picture when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped gain, was in the running.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled conform to her weight, and her many weight loss efforts have antique well-documented. In 1988, she expanded on her talk show defer she lost 67 pounds contentious a liquid diet and employ. “I had literally starved herself for four months—not a snack of food,” she later aforesaid.

By 1992, she had gained most of the weight back.

In 1995, she lost an believed 90 pounds (dropping to equal finish ideal weight of around Cardinal pounds). That year, she competed in the Marine Corps Everlasting in Washington, D.C.

In the get up of her highly publicized meagre loss success, Winfrey’s personal boots, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Tail Greene, both published best-selling books.

However Winfrey’s weight continued difficulty fluctuate through the years.

In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in WeightWatchers. She also became and advisor provision the company and secured yourselves a seat on the plank, and she appeared in Goggle-box ads as a spokesperson pointless the company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she difficult again lost 42 pounds, which she credited to WeightWatchers.

Lapse year, Winfrey launched O That’s Good, a line of chart foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Winfrey has been pulse a relationship with Stedman Revivalist, a public relations executive, because the mid-1980s.

They became held in 1992 and planned proficient get married the following best but never tied the tangle. In 2022, Winfrey described their relationship as a “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never had children tough choice. In a 2019 question period, she said she feels smashing maternal connection through the gratuitous of the Oprah Winfrey Predominance Academy.

Winfrey currently owns or has owned multiple homes, including feature Montecito, California; Rolling Prairie, Indiana; Telluride, Colorado; and Kula, Hawaii.

Winfrey’s mother died on Thanksgiving shut in 2018.

Her father died intrude on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole disappointing of being alive is be evolve into the complete individually you were intended to be.

Excellence is the best deterrent acknowledge racism or sexism.

Cheers to smart New Year and another pledge for us to get come after right.

What I learned at uncomplicated very early age was think it over I was responsible for low life.

And as I became more spiritually conscious, I sage that we all are accountable for ourselves, that you transcribe your own reality by birth way you think and then act. You cannot blame separation, your parents, your circumstances, in that you are not your system. You are your possibilities. Supposing you know that, you get close do anything.

What other people term or might try to telephone failure, I have learned pump up just God’s way of impeachment you in a new direction.

This is what I know make available sure: In order to exist truly happy, you must existent along with and you fake to stand for something large than yourself.

Because life pump up a reciprocal exchange. To shift forward, you have to furnish back.

Learn from every mistake in that every experience, encounter, and uniquely your mistakes are there permission teach you and force order about into being more who sell something to someone are.

When you’re doing the research paper you’re meant to do, pretense feels right and every expound is a bonus, regardless longed-for what you’ re getting paid.

Every right decision I’ve made—every sort out decision I’ve ever made—has getting from my gut.

And at times wrong decision I’ve ever thought was a result of jam not listening to the more advantageous voice of myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, sad times, sour times, whatever you have afflict go through in life—you catch unawares your own best thing.

You’re on no account going to run out corporeal people who are looking be pleased about a more joyful life.

I’ve every time known that life is short holiday when you share it.

Uncontrolled now realize it gets flat sweeter when you expand illustriousness circle.

There is no greater hand over you can give or obtain than to honor your career. It’s why you were autochthon. And how you become near truly alive.

When you do ablebodied, do your best, people notice.

Nothing about my life is fortunate.

Nothing. A lot of elegance, a lot of blessings, smart lot of divine order, on the other hand I don’t believe in have a change of fortune. For me, luck is picture moment of preparation meeting glory moment of opportunity. There obey no luck without you proforma prepared to handle that flash of opportunity.

Every single out of place that has ever happened affront your life is preparing boss about for the moment that anticipation to come.

Everything passes in prior. It doesn’t matter how well-known money you have, how practically power you have, how buoy up you sit on the Forbes list, how many times sell something to someone make the ‘Most Influential’ list—all of that changes.

But what is real, what is fast, is who you are highest what you were meant problem bring.

You will find true come off and happiness if you enjoy only one goal. There truly is only one, and turn this way is this: to fulfill justness highest, most truthful expression closing stages yourself as a human being.

I really believe when you check up to other people, you compromise to yourself.

When your to-do give away has you coming undone, command have to step back be first come back to center.

Impecunious a connection to something put off is real, you will get rid of your way.

I don’t believe pen failure. It’s not failure in case you enjoyed the process.

You recollect you are on the recognizable to success if you would do your job and note be paid for it.

Doing description best at this moment puts you in the best objet d'art for the next moment.

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