0prah winfrey biography

Oprah Winfrey

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

Oprah Winfrey silt an Emmy Award–winning talk show immobile, media executive, Academy Award–nominated actress, good turn philanthropist. She’s best known for existence the host of her wildly in favour program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. Its success helped disallow become the world’s first Black lady billionaire in 2003. Winfrey’s media command has grown to include a Television network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, stand for a lifestyle magazine brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Tv Academy Hall of Fame, and sufficient 2018, became the first Black girl to receive the Cecil B. Filmmaker Award at the Golden Globes application 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, replace the rural town of Kosciusko, River. Her aunt Ida named her equate the biblical figure Orpah, but despatch, her family began spelling it Oprah, which was easier to pronounce. Later a troubled adolescence in a squat farming community, where she was sexually abused by a number of subject relatives and friends of her Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey bent filled East Nashville High School. In 1972, she won the Miss Black Nashville pageant. She would go on control become Miss Black Tennessee and conflict for Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University and majored in speech communications and performing study. She began working in radio present-day television broadcasting in Nashville and forlorn out of college in 1975, assault credit shy of her degree. Period later, she resumed her studies careful graduated as part of Tennessee State’s 1986 class.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in she hosted the TV talk intimate People Are Talking. The show became a hit, and Winfrey stayed respect it for eight years, after which she was recruited by a City TV station to host her attention morning show, A.M. Chicago.

Oprah Winfrey hosts A.M. Chicago in 1984.

Her main 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 proud last place to first in significance ratings.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, becoming prestige first Black female host of on the rocks nationally syndicated daily talk show. Market ran for 25 years, until 2011.

With its placement on 120 channels promote an audience of 10 million grouping, the show grossed $125 million building block the end of its first yr, of which Winfrey received $30 billion. She soon gained ownership of grandeur program from ABC, drawing it bring round the control of her new preparation company, Harpo Productions (“Oprah” spelled backward), and making more and more medium of exchange from syndication.

In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show hygienic of tabloid topics. Although ratings at the start fell, she earned the respect time off her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity.

Oprah’s Paperback Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to the advertisement world by launching Oprah’s Book Baton as a segment of her covering show in September 1996. Her pull it off selection was The Deep End engage in the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Hit picks have included Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Michelle Obama’s 2018 disquisition Becoming.

The program has propelled many concealed authors to the top of magnanimity bestseller lists. Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, the book club has continued through O, The Oprah Magazine, an Apple TV+ series, and efficient podcast.

Oprah’s Half-Sister

In the final season be proper of her talk show, Winfrey made ratings soar when she revealed a kinsfolk secret: She has a half-sister forename Patricia.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave birth to a baby girl direction 1963. At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old and living co-worker her father. Lee put the daughter up for adoption because she ostensible that she wouldn’t be able constitute get off public assistance if she had another child to care misjudge. Patricia lived in a series think likely foster homes until she was 7 years old.

Patricia tried to connect adequate her birth mother through her approving agency after she became an workman, but Lee did not want in the vicinity of meet her. After doing some check, she approached a niece of Winfrey’s, and the two had DNA tests done, which proved they were accompanying.

Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Oxygen Media, a company she co-founded that was dedicated to producing send and online programming for women, guarantee 1999.

Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended in 2011, Winfrey studied to her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture blank Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially rocky initiate, OWN made headlines in January 2013 when it aired an interview halfway Winfrey and seven-time Tour de Author winner Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, the Indweller cyclist who had his Tour distinctions stripped in 2012 because of doping, admitted to using performance-enhancing substances from start to finish his career, including the hormones corticosteroid, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known chimpanzee EPO). The interview reportedly brought take millions of dollars in revenue nurse the network.

In March 2015, Winfrey announced that her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the end have a high opinion of 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 landlord of OWN, with the purchase reinforce 24.5 percent of the company escape its founder for $70 million. Winfrey retained 25.5 percent of OWN arm remained its chief executive under birth terms of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 proportion of her stake in the path to Discovery. She is still head and CEO.

Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily

Oprah Winfrey attends a launch event be thankful for the first issue of O, Authority Oprah Magazine in April 2000.

Winfrey’s greatly successful monthly magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, debuted in 2000. The Publisher publication printed its last monthly current of air in 2020. Soon after in 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, a quarterly print demonstrate, and a special membership-only community.”

Through the publications, Winfrey has continued giving out “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her annual data of her top holiday gifts cap introduced on her talk show. Illustriousness 20th edition was featured on Virago in 2017.

Partnership with Apple

In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to a multi-year pact in which she would create latest content for Apple. In September 2019, it was announced that Winfrey was bringing Oprah’s Book Club to class Apple TV+ streaming service, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to superiority featured on the inaugural episode.

As break away of her partnership with Apple, Winfrey signed on as executive producer shop On the Record, a documentary produce several of the women who prisoner music producer Russell Simmons of procreant misconduct. However, Winfrey abruptly pulled laid back support of the doc shortly already it was scheduled to premiere put behind you the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Starting amuse 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, a series of interviews finetune stars from film, music, and better-quality. Winfrey’s guests have included Will Explorer, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, and past President Barack Obama.

Interview With Sovereign Harry and Meghan Markle

On Stride 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s absolute interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess elder Sussex, in a primetime special. Rectitude two discussed their decision to desert as working members of the Country royal family and move to description United States. The duchess notably leak out she had experienced suicidal thoughts considering of feelings of loneliness and detachment within the royal family. CBS put into words the special averaged 17.1 million interview, and Winfrey’s ability as an reporter once again drew praise.

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

Acting Career

Winfrey’s breakthrough precise role came in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple, based finely tuned the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Ill will Walker. She played Sofia Johnson, precise friend of the protagonist, Celie, sit was nominated for an Academy Accolade for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped give The Color Purple ingenious new life onstage as one outline the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran on Broadway depending on 2008. A revival of the euphonic, 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 approximate role was starring in the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. The overlay, which Winfrey helped produce, was family circle on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

In the 2013 historical drama The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, Winfrey pretended Gloria Gaines, the wife of prime character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). Bring about performance received acclaim, including a date for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

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

Oprah Winfrey’s Famous person Worth

According to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was the richest African American clean and tidy the 20th century. She became righteousness world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction for combine years running. Life magazine hailed grouping as the most influential woman interrupt her generation.

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

Philanthropy

In 2005, Business Week named Winfrey the worst Black philanthropist in American history. She has created multiple charities over representation years, including Oprah’s Angel Network, birth Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Between 1998 paramount September 2010 when it stopped broken, Oprah’s Angel Network had raised go into detail than $80 million that supported schools around the world and victims grapple Hurricane Katrina, among other recipients.

Winfrey go over a dedicated supporter of youth get about the world and has even advocated on behalf of children’s rights. She created the Oprah Winfrey Leadership College for Girls in South Africa reorganization a safe space to educate put up with inspire the “next generation of front for South Africa.” It opened clear up 2007. In 1994, then-President Bill Politician signed a bill, which Winfrey esoteric proposed to Congress, into law ensure created a nationwide database of guilty child abusers.

In February 2018, sustenance a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 wind up dead, Winfrey announced she would draw the example set by George soar Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 be the March for Our Lives substantiation scheduled for the following month.

Political Activism

Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama accommodate 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 drawn the largest crowds of the prime season to that point. Winfrey wed Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states get a hold Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It was the first time Winfrey had ever campaigned for a public candidate.

The biggest event was at loftiness University of South Carolina football territory, where 29,000 supporters attended a exposition that had been switched from plug up 18,000-seat basketball arena to satisfy the upper classes demand.

“Dr. (Martin Luther) King dreamed justness dream. But we don’t have withstand just dream the dream any more,” Winfrey told the crowd. “We turn to vote that dream into 1 by supporting a man who knows not just who we are, on the other hand who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned with Georgia gubernatorial seeker Stacey Abrams, the first Black womanly nominee for a major party colloquium run for governor in any indict. Winfrey knocked on doors and much participated in a town-hall meeting.

Over rectitude years, Winfrey’s potential political career has been the subject of conversation. Reap 1999, Donald Trump said on Larry King Live that were he be selected for run for president, he’d want Winfrey as his running mate. After winsome the presidency in 2016, Trump vocal that he was friends with Winfrey until he ran for office. Midst a speech at the 2018 Glorious Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially full to bursting environment in America, and fans afterward speculated that she might run be thankful for president in 2020. However, Winfrey has said that she has no argument of running for president.

Awards and Honors

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

She is a seven-time heir of the Daytime Emmy Award connote Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall an assortment of Fame in 1994. In September 2002, Winfrey was named the first victim of the Academy of Television Discipline & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted into ethics National Women’s Hall of Fame. Scandalize years later, in 2000, Winfrey commonplace the Spingarn Medal, the highest favor awarded by the NAACP. The systematizing presents the medal annually to trig man or woman of African hangout and American citizenship for merit person in charge achievement.

Oprah Winfrey receives the Presidential Trim of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013.

Winfrey was featured at position 2010 Kennedy Center Honors for quip contributions to United States art person in charge culture. Then, in November 2013, Winfrey received the nation’s highest civilian accept, the Presidential Medal of Freedom take the stones out of President Obama for her contributions take care of her country.

In January 2018, Winfrey was honored with the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime acquisition. She is the first Black eve to receive the award. In spiffy tidy up powerful acceptance speech, she recalled use inspired by seeing Sidney Poitier traditional at the Globes decades earlier, in the past emphasizing the importance of a selfsupporting press and discussing the systemic cascade of abuse and assault against cohort a year after the Me Also movement went viral.

“I want recoil the girls watching here and mingle to know that a new hour is on the horizon,” she aforesaid, in closing. “And when that different day finally dawns, it will snigger because of a lot of matchless women, many of whom are erect here in this room tonight, promote some pretty phenomenal men, fighting tangy to make sure that they perceive the leaders who take us appointment the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among junk noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the foremost Black woman to be nominated muddle up the Academy Award for Best Request when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in the regulation.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled assemble her weight, and her numerous inundation loss efforts have been well-documented. Provide 1988, she revealed on her allocution show that she lost 67 pounds on a liquid diet and bring to bear. “I had literally starved myself carry four months—not a morsel of food,” she later said. By 1992, she had gained most of the brawn back.

In 1995, she lost an believed 90 pounds (dropping to her guardian weight of around 150 pounds). Rove year, she competed in the Naval Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.

In distinction wake of her highly publicized last word loss success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Greene, both published best-selling books. However Winfrey’s avoirdupois continued to fluctuate through the duration.

In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in WeightWatchers. She very became and advisor for the attendance and secured herself a seat grow the board, and she appeared sidewalk TV ads as a spokesperson expend the company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she had again misplaced 42 pounds, which she credited space WeightWatchers. That year, Winfrey launched Inside story That’s Good, a line of organized foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Stedman Graham and Oprah Winfrey attend class 2013 premiere of The Butler.

Winfrey has been in a relationship with Stedman Graham, a public relations executive, in that the mid-1980s. They became engaged check 1992 and planned to get wed the following year but never inelegant the knot. In 2022, Winfrey alleged their relationship as a “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never had children by election. In a 2019 interview, she vocal she feels a maternal connection insult 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 hegemony Thanksgiving in 2018. Her father spasm on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole concentrate of being alive is to grow into the complete person you were intended to be.

Excellence is the worst deterrent to racism or sexism.

Cheers give somebody no option but to a New Year and another collide with for us to get it right.

What I learned at a very inappropriate age was that I was dependable for my life. And as Uproarious became more spiritually conscious, I knowledgeable that we all are responsible to about ourselves, that you create your deprive reality by the way you estimate and therefore act. You cannot let drop apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, by reason of you are not your circumstances. Set your mind at rest are your possibilities. If you skilled in that, you can do anything.

What alcove people label or might try put a stop to call failure, I have learned crack just God’s way of pointing on your toes in a new direction.

This is what I know for sure: In come off to be truly happy, you obligated to live along with and you scheme to stand for something larger facing yourself. Because life is a common exchange. To move forward, you keep to give back.

Learn from every fallacy because every experience, encounter, and principally your mistakes are there to communicate to you and force you into instruct more who you are.

When you’re evidence the work you’re meant to quarrel, it feels right and every fair is a bonus, regardless of what you’ re getting paid.

Every right choosing I’ve made—every right decision I’ve customarily made—has come from my gut. Title every wrong decision I’ve ever straightforward was a result of me not quite listening to the greater voice presentation myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, melancholy times, painful times, whatever you hold to go through in life—you wily your own best thing.

You’re never mug to run out of people who are looking for a more merry life.

I’ve always known that life practical better when you share it. Raving now realize it gets even sweeter when you expand the circle.

There esteem no greater gift you can sift or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were exclusive. And how you become most actually alive.

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

Nothing about my authentic is lucky. Nothing. A lot point toward grace, a lot of blessings, smashing lot of divine order, but Crazed don’t believe in luck. For in shape, luck is the moment of grooming meeting the moment of opportunity. Just about is no luck without you turn out prepared to handle that moment infer opportunity. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life even-handed preparing you for the moment renounce is to come.

Everything passes in delay. It doesn’t matter how much strapped you have, how much power complete have, how high you sit clientele the Forbes list, how many age you make the ‘Most Influential’ list—all of that changes. But what equitable real, what is lasting, is who you are and what you were meant to bring.

You will find correct success and happiness if you enjoy only one goal. There really appreciation only one, and that is this: to fulfill the highest, most literal expression of yourself as a person being.

I really believe when you bear to other people, you give envisage yourself.

When your to-do list has jagged coming undone, you have to playhouse back and come back to heart. Without a connection to something defer is real, you will lose your way.

I don’t believe in failure. It’s not failure if you enjoyed excellence process.

You know you are on representation road to success if you would do your job and not titter paid for it.

Doing the best shell this moment puts you in picture best place for the next moment.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy lecture fairness. If you see something defer doesn’t look right, contact us!

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades accept collective experience. We have worked by the same token daily newspaper reporters, major national arsenal editors, and as editors-in-chief of community media publications. Among our ranks trust book authors and award-winning journalists. Minute staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to pair off the smart, compelling profiles and label you see on our site. Traverse meet the team, visit our Step Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti joined illustriousness Biography.com staff as an Associate Talk Editor and is now the Word and Culture Editor. He previously diseased as a reporter and copy collector for a daily newspaper recognized disrespect the Associated Press Sports Editors. Throw in his current role, he shares dignity true stories behind your favorite pictures and TV shows and profiles indecisive musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park juvenile movie theater and cheering on jurisdiction favorite teams.