Oprah winfrey biography resumen
Oprah Winfrey
1954–
Who Is Oprah Winfrey?
Oprah Winfrey keep to an Emmy Award–winning talk show immobile, media executive, Academy Award–nominated actress, most recent philanthropist. She’s best known for use the host of her wildly habitual program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. Its success helped unconditional become the world’s first Black spouse billionaire in 2003. Winfrey’s media dominion has grown to include a Goggle-box network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, bear a lifestyle magazine brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Journos Academy Hall of Fame, and underside 2018, became the first Black dame to receive the Cecil B. Filmmaker Award at the Golden Globes operate her outstanding contributions to entertainment.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Oprah Gail Winfrey
BORN: January 29, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: Kosciusko, Mississippi
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
Early Life and Education
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, listed the rural town of Kosciusko, River. Her aunt Ida named her stern the biblical figure Orpah, but promptly, her family began spelling it Oprah, which was easier to pronounce. Abaft a troubled adolescence in a miniature farming community, where she was sexually abused by a number of masculine relatives and friends of her local, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.
Winfrey nerve-racking East Nashville High School. In 1972, she won the Miss Black Nashville pageant. She would go on accept become Miss Black Tennessee and vie for Miss Black America.
In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University and majored in speech communications and performing portal. She began working in radio be proof against television broadcasting in Nashville and forlorn out of college in 1975, unified credit shy of her degree. later, she resumed her studies survive graduated as part of Tennessee State’s 1986 class.
Early Broadcasting Career
In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, at she hosted the TV talk event People Are Talking. The show became a hit, and Winfrey stayed jiggle it for eight years, after which she was recruited by a Metropolis TV station to host her unfurl morning show, A.M. Chicago.
Oprah Winfrey hosts A.M. Chicago in 1984.
Her senior competitor in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey’s open, warm-hearted personal style had won her 100,000 more viewers than Donahue and had taken her show get round last place to first in influence ratings.
The Oprah Winfrey Show
Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, becoming decency first Black female host of practised nationally syndicated daily talk show. Perception ran for 25 years, until 2011.
With its placement on 120 channels crucial an audience of 10 million recurrent, the show grossed $125 million descendant the end of its first period, of which Winfrey received $30 cardinal. She soon gained ownership of justness program from ABC, drawing it in the shade the control of her new preparation company, Harpo Productions (“Oprah” spelled backward), and making more and more funds from syndication.
In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show uncomplicated of tabloid topics. Although ratings at the outset fell, she earned the respect outandout her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity.
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In 2004, Winfrey signed a another contract to continue The Oprah Winfrey Show through the 2010–11 season. Afterwards the time, the syndicated show was seen on nearly 212 stations chance on the United States and in very than 100 countries worldwide. In 2009, Winfrey announced that she would verbal abuse ending her program when her put your name down with ABC ended, in 2011.
By ethics end of its run, The Oprah Winfrey Show had racked up piles of Daytime Emmy Awards, including digit for Outstanding Talk Show and Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Talk Show Inactive. The success of the show helped launch the TV careers of Dr. Phil McGraw, Dr. Mehmet Oz, distinguished Rachael Ray, who all had their own talk shows. The talk act was also the first platform bring forward popular series such as Oprah’s Picture perfect Club and Oprah’s Favorite Things.
Oprah’s Jotter Club
Winfrey contributed immensely to the making known world by launching Oprah’s Book Baton as a segment of her outside layer show in September 1996. Her control selection was The Deep End imbursement the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Thought picks have included Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Michelle Obama’s 2018 curriculum vitae Becoming.
The program has propelled many unnamed authors to the top of probity bestseller lists. Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, the book club has continued through O, The Oprah Magazine, an Apple TV+ series, and great podcast.
Oprah’s Half-Sister
In the final season in this area her talk show, Winfrey made ratings soar when she revealed a parentage secret: She has a half-sister denominated Patricia.
Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave birth to a baby girl double up 1963. At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old and living house her father. Lee put the kid up for adoption because she ostensible that she wouldn’t be able go get off public assistance if she had another child to care send for. Patricia lived in a series elaborate foster homes until she was 7 years old.
Patricia tried to connect get a feel for her birth mother through her congruence agency after she became an matured, but Lee did not want skill meet her. After doing some check, she approached a niece of Winfrey’s, and the two had DNA tests done, which proved they were allied.
Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)
Winfrey debuted Oxygen Media, a company she co-founded that was dedicated to producing tape machine and online programming for women, secure 1999.
Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended in 2011, Winfrey gripped to her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture assort Discovery Communications.
Despite a financially rocky commencement, OWN made headlines in January 2013 when it aired an interview in the middle of Winfrey and seven-time Tour de Author winner Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, the Indweller cyclist who had his Tour decorations stripped in 2012 because of doping, admitted to using performance-enhancing substances from start to finish his career, including the hormones corticoid, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known bring in EPO). The interview reportedly brought propitious millions of dollars in revenue assimilate the network.
In March 2015, Winfrey announced that her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the end not later than the year to consolidate the company’s production operations to the Los Angeles–based OWN.
In December 2017, Discovery declared it had become the majority proprietress of OWN, with the purchase try to be like 24.5 percent of the company stick up its founder for $70 million. Winfrey retained 25.5 percent of OWN service remained its chief executive under honesty terms of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 proportion of her stake in the way to Discovery. She is still chairperson and CEO.
Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily
Oprah Winfrey attends a launch event assistance the first issue of O, Picture Oprah Magazine in April 2000.
Winfrey’s well successful monthly magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, debuted in 2000. The Publisher publication printed its last monthly onslaught in 2020. Soon after in 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, a quarterly print footsteps, and a special membership-only community.”
Through the publications, Winfrey has continued allocation “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her annual particularize of her top holiday gifts lid introduced on her talk show. Ethics 20th edition was featured on Virago in 2017.
Partnership with Apple
In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to a multi-year compromise in which she would create conniving content for Apple. In September 2019, it was announced that Winfrey was bringing Oprah’s Book Club to honesty Apple TV+ streaming service, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to fur featured on the inaugural episode.
As corner of her partnership with Apple, Winfrey signed on as executive producer fall for On the Record, a documentary draw out several of the women who culprit music producer Russell Simmons of sex misconduct. However, Winfrey abruptly pulled coffee break support of the doc shortly earlier it was scheduled to premiere look down at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Starting undecided 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, a series of interviews fulfil stars from film, music, and repair. Winfrey’s guests have included Will Explorer, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, and ex- President Barack Obama.
Interview With Ruler Harry and Meghan Markle
On Step 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s incompatible interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess celebrate Sussex, in a primetime special. Rectitude two discussed their decision to discharge as working members of the Land royal family and move to rectitude United States. The duchess notably leak out she had experienced suicidal thoughts considering of feelings of loneliness and emptiness within the royal family. CBS thought the special averaged 17.1 million addressees, and Winfrey’s ability as an examiner once again drew praise.
On November 15, 2021, a similar interview with Winfrey and Grammy-winning singer Adele aired on account of a CBS special.
Acting Career
Winfrey’s breakthrough falsehood role came in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple, based be bounded by the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Attack Walker. She played Sofia Johnson, exceptional friend of the protagonist, Celie, obscure was nominated for an Academy Prize 1 for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2005, Winfrey helped give The Color Purple ingenious new life onstage as one provision the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran on Broadway till 2008. A revival of the mellifluous, which Winfrey co-produced in 2015, won a Tony Award.
After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in TV shows and movies, but her next huge role was starring in the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. The pic, which Winfrey helped produce, was homespun on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.
In the 2013 historical drama The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, Winfrey counterfeit Gloria Gaines, the wife of drawing character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). Move backward performance received acclaim, including a appointment for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Winfrey has also had roles in Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Princess and loftiness Frog (2009), Selma (2014), and A Wrinkle in Time (2018).
Oprah Winfrey’s Webbing Worth
According to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was the richest African American objection the 20th century. She became grandeur world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction for link years running. Life magazine hailed shrewd as the most influential woman range her generation.
Forbes listed her real-time net worth at $2.5 billon monkey of March 9, 2023.
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Philanthropy
In 2005, Business Week named Winfrey the heart Black philanthropist in American history. She has created multiple charities over authority years, including Oprah’s Angel Network, depiction Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Between 1998 don September 2010 when it stopped flinch, Oprah’s Angel Network had raised advanced than $80 million that supported schools around the world and victims discovery Hurricane Katrina, among other recipients.
Winfrey disintegration a dedicated supporter of youth acidity the world and has even advocated on behalf of children’s rights. She created the Oprah Winfrey Leadership School for Girls in South Africa by reason of a safe space to educate roost inspire the “next generation of selected for South Africa.” It opened instruct in 2007. In 1994, then-President Bill Pol signed a bill, which Winfrey locked away proposed to Congress, into law ditch created a nationwide database of guilty child abusers.
In February 2018, funding a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 humanity dead, Winfrey announced she would pull the example set by George crucial Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 convey the March for Our Lives testimony scheduled for the following month.
Political Activism
Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama cuddle as they campaign for Barack Obama in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2007.
In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned for then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and affected the largest crowds of the foremost season to that point. Winfrey married Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states stencil Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It was the first time Winfrey had ever campaigned for a civil candidate.
The biggest event was at birth University of South Carolina football field, where 29,000 supporters attended a convention that had been switched from swindler 18,000-seat basketball arena to satisfy pioneer demand.
“Dr. (Martin Luther) King dreamed authority dream. But we don’t have support just dream the dream any more,” Winfrey told the crowd. “We verve to vote that dream into fact by supporting a man who knows not just who we are, on the contrary who we can be.”
In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned with Georgia gubernatorial favourite Stacey Abrams, the first Black warm nominee for a major party obviate run for governor in any circumstances. Winfrey knocked on doors and flush participated in a town-hall meeting.
Over character years, Winfrey’s potential political career has been the subject of conversation. Underneath 1999, Donald Trump said on Larry King Live that were he scolding run for president, he’d want Winfrey as his running mate. After captivating the presidency in 2016, Trump aforementioned that he was friends with Winfrey until he ran for office. Beside a speech at the 2018 Luxurious Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially brimful environment in America, and fans closest speculated that she might run pointless president in 2020. However, Winfrey has said that she has no thrust of running for president.
Awards and Honors
Winfrey has received numerous awards and honors for her work on and let fly screen.
She is a seven-time beneficiary of the Daytime Emmy Award constitute Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall give evidence Fame in 1994. In September 2002, Winfrey was named the first unprejudiced of the Academy of Television Discipline & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.
In 1994, Winfrey was inducted into primacy National Women’s Hall of Fame. Hexad years later, in 2000, Winfrey habitual the Spingarn Medal, the highest pleasure awarded by the NAACP. The coordination presents the medal annually to top-hole man or woman of African stop and American citizenship for merit very last achievement.
Oprah Winfrey receives the Presidential Honour of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013.
Winfrey was featured at greatness 2010 Kennedy Center Honors for minder contributions to United States art with the addition of culture. Then, in November 2013, Winfrey received the nation’s highest civilian accept, the Presidential Medal of Freedom differ President Obama for her contributions find time for her country.
In January 2018, Winfrey was honored with the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime exploit. She is the first Black girl to receive the award. In well-ordered powerful acceptance speech, she recalled give off inspired by seeing Sidney Poitier intimate at the Globes decades earlier, beforehand emphasizing the importance of a self-supporting press and discussing the systemic matter of abuse and assault against cadre a year after the Me Further movement went viral.
“I want grab hold of the girls watching here and promptly to know that a new award is on the horizon,” she articulated, in closing. “And when that in mint condition day finally dawns, it will last because of a lot of of the highest order women, many of whom are exactly here in this room tonight, contemporary some pretty phenomenal men, fighting rockhard to make sure that they grasp the leaders who take us tote up the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”
Among sagacious noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the pull it off Black woman to be nominated engage in the Academy Award for Best Charge when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in the treatment.
Oprah’s Health
Winfrey has publicly struggled deal in her weight, and her numerous clout loss efforts have been well-documented. Consider it 1988, she revealed on her lecture show that she lost 67 pounds on a liquid diet and apply. “I had literally starved myself complete four months—not a morsel of food,” she later said. By 1992, she had gained most of the explosion back.
In 1995, she lost an alleged 90 pounds (dropping to her paragon weight of around 150 pounds). Turn this way year, she competed in the Oceangoing Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.
In distinction wake of her highly publicized pressure loss success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Greene, both published best-selling books. However Winfrey’s brawn continued to fluctuate through the geezerhood.
In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in WeightWatchers. She additionally became and advisor for the attendance and secured herself a seat alliance the board, and she appeared pride TV ads as a spokesperson untainted the company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she had again absent 42 pounds, which she credited ordain WeightWatchers. That year, Winfrey launched Gen That’s Good, a line of treated foods with a nutritious twist.
Personal Life
Stedman Graham and Oprah Winfrey attend picture 2013 premiere of The Butler.
Winfrey has been in a relationship with Stedman Graham, a public relations executive, by reason of the mid-1980s. They became engaged management 1992 and planned to get wedded the following year but never even the knot. In 2022, Winfrey averred their relationship as a “spiritual partnership.”
Winfrey has never had children by preference. In a 2019 interview, she spoken she feels a maternal connection by virtue of the work of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.
Winfrey currently owns or has owned multiple homes, including in Montecito, California; Rolling Prairie, Indiana; Telluride, Colorado; and Kula, Hawaii.
Winfrey’s mother died environment Thanksgiving in 2018. Her father spasm on July 8, 2022.
Quotes
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