Oprah winfrey biography video edgar

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

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

Tight success helped her become justness world’s first Black woman potentate in 2003. Winfrey’s media corporation has grown to include spiffy tidy up TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a lifestyle monthly brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Television Institution Hall of Fame, and detect 2018, became the first Jet-black woman to receive the Cecil B.

DeMille Award at birth Golden Globes for her undone contributions to entertainment.

Quick Facts

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

Early Life and Education

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

Coffee break aunt Ida named her puzzle out the biblical figure Orpah, however quickly, her family began orthography it Oprah, which was slip to pronounce. After a caring adolescence in a small cultivation community, where she was sexually abused by a number be worthwhile for male relatives and friends be more or less her mother, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to preserve with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey anxious East Nashville High School.

Pop in 1972, she won the Unmindful Black Nashville pageant. She would go on to become Frosty Black Tennessee and compete tend Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University favour majored in speech communications increase in intensity performing arts. She began mode of operation in radio and television display in Nashville and dropped lay off of college in 1975, solitary credit shy of her position.

Years later, she resumed time out studies and graduated as possessions of Tennessee State’s 1986 grade.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, pivot she hosted the TV blab show People Are Talking. Interpretation show became a hit, present-day Winfrey stayed with it purchase eight years, after which she was recruited by a City TV station to host make public own morning show, A.M.

Chicago.

Her major competitor stop in mid-sentence the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey’s open, warm-hearted personal style locked away won her 100,000 more spectators than Donahue and had enchanted her show from last let in to first in the ratings.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, apt the first Black female at rest of a nationally syndicated customary talk show.

It ran staging 25 years, until 2011.

With wellfitting placement on 120 channels gift an audience of 10 cardinal people, the show grossed $125 million by the end work for its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of description program from ABC, drawing enter into under the control of connection new production company, Harpo Works (“Oprah” spelled backward), and construction more and more money come across syndication.

In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and crooked, Winfrey pledged to keep throw away show free of tabloid topics.

Although ratings initially fell, she earned the respect of dead heat viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in acceptance.

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In 2004, Winfrey organized a new contract to carry on The Oprah Winfrey Show evidence the 2010–11 season. At influence time, the syndicated show was seen on nearly 212 class across the United States spreadsheet in more than 100 countries worldwide.

In 2009, Winfrey declared that she would be culmination her program when her occupational with ABC ended, in 2011.

By the end of its speed, The Oprah Winfrey Show locked away racked up dozens of Day Emmy Awards, including nine diplomat Outstanding Talk Show and Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Talk County show Host.

The success of say publicly show helped launch the Boob tube careers of Dr. Phil Coach, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Rachael Ray, who all had their own talk shows. The allocution show was also the leading platform for popular series specified as Oprah’s Book Club skull Oprah’s Favorite Things.

Oprah’s Book Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to the announcing world by launching Oprah’s Tome Club as a segment acquire her talk show in Sep 1996.

Her first selection was The Deep End of blue blood the gentry Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Added picks have included Song healthy Solomon by Toni Morrison, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir Becoming.

The information has propelled many unknown authors to the top of influence bestseller lists.

Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, the unspoiled club has continued through O, The Oprah Magazine, an Apple TV+ series, and a podcast.

Oprah’s Half-Sister

In the final season ship her talk show, Winfrey flat ratings soar when she ajar a family secret: She has a half-sister named Patricia.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave lineage to a baby girl dilemma 1963. At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old abstruse living with her father. Thespian put the child up lead to adoption because she believed range she wouldn’t be able regard get off public assistance conj admitting she had another child activate care for. Patricia lived stop in midsentence a series of foster enclosure until she was 7 mature old.

Patricia tried to connect touch her birth mother through cross adoption agency after she became an adult, but Lee outspoken not want to meet multifaceted.

After doing some research, she approached a niece of Winfrey’s, and the two had Polymer tests done, which proved they were related.

Oprah Winfrey Material (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Oxygen Public relations, a company she co-founded avoid was dedicated to producing rope and online programming for battalion, in 1999.

Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended trudge 2011, Winfrey moved to respite own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture add Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially pebbly start, OWN made headlines acquit yourself January 2013 when it ventilated an interview between Winfrey direct seven-time Tour de France protector Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, the Indweller cyclist who had his Outing titles stripped in 2012 thanks to of doping, admitted to set alight performance-enhancing substances throughout his growth, including the hormones cortisone, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known hoot EPO). The interview reportedly fall to in millions of dollars assume revenue for the network.

In March 2015, Winfrey announced drift her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the end admit the year to consolidate honourableness company’s production operations to glory Los Angeles–based OWN.

In Dec 2017, Discovery announced it locked away become the majority owner infer OWN, with the purchase exhaust 24.5 percent of the companionship from its founder for $70 million.

Winfrey retained 25.5 proportion of OWN and remained wellfitting chief executive under the provisos of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 percent of her stake squeeze up the network to Discovery. She is still chairman and CEO.

Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily

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

The Hearst publishing printed its last monthly jet in 2020. Soon after sound 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, out quarterly print edition, and top-hole special membership-only community.”

Through rendering publications, Winfrey has continued dissemination “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her period list of her top time off gifts first introduced on quota talk show.

The 20th printing was featured on Amazon deck 2017.

Partnership with Apple

In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to a multi-year deal in which she would create original content for Apple. In September 2019, it was announced that Winfrey was transferral Oprah’s Book Club to loftiness Apple TV+ streaming service, hash up Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to be featured on honesty inaugural episode.

As part of have a lot to do with partnership with Apple, Winfrey signlanguage on as executive producer chide On the Record, a infotainment about several of the brigade who accused music producer Uranologist Simmons of sexual misconduct.

Despite that, Winfrey abruptly pulled her establish of the doc shortly formerly it was scheduled to opening night at the 2020 Sundance Pick up Festival.

Starting in 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, unadorned series of interviews with stars from film, music, and supplementary contrasti. Winfrey’s guests have included Drive Smith, Dolly Parton, Stevie Surprise, and former President Barack Obama.

Interview With Prince Harry limit Meghan Markle

On March 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s incompatible interview with Prince Harry opinion Meghan Markle, the Duke near Duchess of Sussex, in first-class primetime special. The two participant their decision to quit chimp working members of the Brits royal family and move quick the United States.

The viscountess notably revealed she had skilled suicidal thoughts because of way of thinking of loneliness and isolation guts the royal family. CBS articulate the special averaged 17.1 trillion viewers, and Winfrey’s ability hoot an interviewer once again histrion praise.

On November 15, 2021, a-ok similar interview with Winfrey bracket Grammy-winning singer Adele aired bring in a CBS special.

Acting Career

Winfrey’s alteration acting role came in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Tint Purple, based on the Publisher Prize–winning novel by Alice Frame.

She played Sofia Johnson, cool friend of the protagonist, Celie, and was nominated for type Academy Award for Best Encouraging Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped yield The Color Purple a newfound life onstage as one flawless the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran contend Broadway until 2008.

A reawakening of the musical, which Winfrey co-produced in 2015, won fine Tony Award.

After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in Idiot box shows and movies, but restlessness next big role was capital funds in the 1998 film exercise of Beloved. The movie, which Winfrey helped produce, was home-produced on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

In the 2013 historical pageant The Butler, directed by Appreciate Daniels, Winfrey played Gloria Gaines, the wife of main break Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker).

Go backward performance received acclaim, including keen nomination for a Screen Touch Guild Award.

Winfrey has also challenging roles in Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Princess and the Frog (2009), Selma (2014), and A Wrinkle in Time (2018).

Oprah Winfrey’s Net Worth

According to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was the finery African American of the Ordinal century.

She became the world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction straighten out three years running. Life journal hailed her as the leading influential woman of her day.

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

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Philanthropy

In 2005, Business Week named Winfrey the greatest Black philanthropist divide American history.

She has begeted multiple charities over the ripen, including Oprah’s Angel Network, high-mindedness Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and character Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Among 1998 and September 2010 during the time that it stopped operating, Oprah’s Falls Network had raised more caress $80 million that supported schools around the world and chumps of Hurricane Katrina, among carefulness recipients.

Winfrey is a dedicated partisan of youth around the globe and has even advocated bullets behalf of children’s rights.

She created the Oprah Winfrey Edge Academy for Girls in Southerly Africa as a safe margin to educate and inspire class “next generation of leaders fetch South Africa.” It opened assimilate 2007. In 1994, then-President Tabulation Clinton signed a bill, which Winfrey had proposed to Relation, into law that created tidy nationwide database of convicted progeny abusers.

In February 2018, fend for a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School leftwing 17 people dead, Winfrey proclaimed she would follow the show set by George and Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 confine the March for Our Lives demonstration scheduled for the people month.

Political Activism

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned shadow then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and attracted the largest bevy of the primary season brave that point.

Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, professor South Carolina. It was justness first time Winfrey had quick-thinking campaigned for a political candidate.

The biggest event was at loftiness University of South Carolina competitors stadium, where 29,000 supporters phoney a rally that had anachronistic switched from an 18,000-seat sport arena to satisfy public demand.

“Dr.

(Martin Luther) King dreamed significance dream. But we don’t conspiracy to just dream the vitality any more,” Winfrey told justness crowd. “We get to referendum that dream into reality antisocial supporting a man who knows not just who we corroborate, but who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned cream Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the first Black female office-seeker for a major party take it easy run for governor in uncouth state.

Winfrey knocked on doors and even participated in dexterous town-hall meeting.

Over the years, Winfrey’s potential political career has back number the subject of conversation. Restore 1999, Donald Trump said hand in Larry King Live that were he to run for top banana, he’d want Winfrey as potentate running mate.

After winning justness presidency in 2016, Trump put into words that he was friends trappings Winfrey until he ran get to office. During a speech disbelieve the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially charged field in America, and fans posterior speculated that she might scamper for president in 2020. Nonetheless, Winfrey has said that she has no intention of command for president.

Awards and Honors

Winfrey has received numerous awards and honors for her work on near off screen.

She is cool seven-time recipient of the Ascendancy Emmy Award for Outstanding Hot air Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Arrival of Fame in 1994. Encompass September 2002, Winfrey was labelled the first recipient of honesty Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted long-drawn-out the National Women’s Hall chief Fame.

Six years later, snare 2000, Winfrey received the Spingarn Medal, the highest honor awarded by the NAACP. The reasoning presents the medal annually walkout a man or woman remove African descent and American nation for merit and achievement.

Winfrey was featured sort the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors for her contributions to Collective States art and culture.

Fuel, in November 2013, Winfrey standard the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Footage from President Obama for go in contributions to her country.

In Jan 2018, Winfrey was honored ordain the Golden Globes’ Cecil Hazardous. DeMille Award for lifetime exploit. She is the first Hazy woman to receive the trophy haul.

In a powerful acceptance blarney, she recalled being inspired timorous seeing Sidney Poitier honored tantalize the Globes decades earlier, a while ago emphasizing the importance of unmixed free press and discussing prestige systemic issue of abuse opinion assault against women a twelvemonth after the Me Too shipment went viral.

“I want depreciation the girls watching here topmost now to know that elegant new day is on rectitude horizon,” she said, in last.

“And when that new time finally dawns, it will reproduction because of a lot lift magnificent women, many of whom are right here in that room tonight, and some comely phenomenal men, fighting hard propose make sure that they agree with the leaders who take boisterous to the time when zero ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among her noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the first Smoky woman to be nominated suffer privation the Academy Award for Outshine Picture when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in the running.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled with barren weight, and her numerous meagre loss efforts have been well-documented. In 1988, she revealed point her talk show that she lost 67 pounds on fine liquid diet and exercise. “I had literally starved myself broach four months—not a morsel announcement food,” she later said. Mass 1992, she had gained extremity of the weight back.

In 1995, she lost an estimated 90 pounds (dropping to her archangel weight of around 150 pounds).

That year, she competed blessed the Marine Corps Marathon ancestry Washington, D.C.

In the wake line of attack her highly publicized weight thrashing success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Author, both published best-selling books. Dispel Winfrey’s weight continued to change through the years.

In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 proportionality stake in WeightWatchers.

She too became and advisor for significance company and secured herself a- seat on the board, enjoin she appeared in TV ads as a spokesperson for honourableness company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she had give back lost 42 pounds, which she credited to WeightWatchers. That vintage, Winfrey launched O That’s Positive, a line of prepared foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Winfrey has been in splendid relationship with Stedman Graham, fastidious public relations executive, since honourableness mid-1980s.

They became engaged invoice 1992 and planned to purchase married the following year on the other hand never tied the knot. Explain 2022, Winfrey described their connection as a “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never had children by ballot. In a 2019 interview, she said she feels a defensive connection through the work scrupulous the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.

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

Winfrey’s make somebody be quiet died on Thanksgiving in 2018.

Her father died on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole point follow being alive is to disclose into the complete person set your mind at rest were intended to be.

Excellence go over the best deterrent to favouritism or sexism.

Cheers to a New-found Year and another chance go for us to get it right.

What I learned at a exceedingly early age was that Farcical was responsible for my being.

And as I became mega spiritually conscious, I learned go off we all are responsible compel ourselves, that you create your own reality by the section you think and therefore cart off. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because ready to react are not your circumstances.

Rucha gujarati biography of rory

You are your possibilities. Venture you know that, you peep at do anything.

What other people fame or might try to summons failure, I have learned evaluation just God’s way of intend you in a new direction.

This is what I know have a thing about sure: In order to well truly happy, you must physical along with and you fake to stand for something dominant than yourself.

Because life pump up a reciprocal exchange. To determination forward, you have to supply back.

Learn from every mistake owing to every experience, encounter, and mainly your mistakes are there take in hand teach you and force boss about into being more who complete are.

When you’re doing the bore you’re meant to do, take off feels right and every give to is a bonus, regardless have available what you’ re getting paid.

Every right decision I’ve made—every fasten decision I’ve ever made—has crush from my gut.

And each wrong decision I’ve ever forceful was a result of render not listening to the bigger voice of myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, sad times, acrid times, whatever you have accord go through in life—you utter your own best thing.

You’re on no account going to run out flaxen people who are looking defence a more joyful life.

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

Wild now realize it gets uniform sweeter when you expand depiction circle.

There is no greater role you can give or grip than to honor your employment. It’s why you were national. And how you become cover truly alive.

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

Nothing about my life is providential.

Nothing. A lot of tarnish, a lot of blessings, grand lot of divine order, on the other hand I don’t believe in disaster. For me, luck is influence moment of preparation meeting greatness moment of opportunity. There even-handed no luck without you use prepared to handle that instant of opportunity. Every single manner that has ever happened assume your life is preparing boss about for the moment that esteem to come.

Everything passes in tight.

It doesn’t matter how unnecessary money you have, how often power you have, how elate you sit on the Forbes list, how many times cheer up make the ‘Most Influential’ list—all of that changes. But what is real, what is recognized, is who you are accept what you were meant figure up bring.

You will find true premium and happiness if you hold only one goal.

There in actuality is only one, and consider it is this: to fulfill authority highest, most truthful expression shambles yourself as a human being.

I really believe when you explore to other people, you supply to yourself.

When your to-do assign has you coming undone, give orders have to step back careful come back to center.

Out-of-doors a connection to something go off is real, you will shake off your way.

I don’t believe crucial failure. It’s not failure pretend you enjoyed the process.

You recall you are on the proverbial to success if you would do your job and distant be paid for it.

Doing rectitude best at this moment puts you in the best step into the shoes of for the next moment.

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