Oprah Winfrey

Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and "Oprah" stuck. She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenaged mother, Vernita Lee, and father Vernon Winfrey. Winfrey's parents never married. Vernita Lee (1935–2018) was a housemaid. Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022) was a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born. A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, from the area that became Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian. After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963). Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her. Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. Her grandmother, a believer in the adage "spare the rod, spoil the child," beat her almost daily. At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother had little time for Oprah as a result of the long hours she worked as a maid. Around this time, Lee had given birth to another daughter, Winfrey's younger half-sister, Patricia, who died of causes related to cocaine addiction in February 2003 at age 43. By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters, so Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee. While Winfrey was in Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter, who was put up for adoption in the hopes of easing the financial straits that had led to Lee's being on welfare, and was later also named Patricia. Winfrey did not know that she had a second half-sister until 2010. By the time Winfrey moved back with her mother, Lee had also given birth to Winfrey's half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church. 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 on a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse. A biographer alleged that when Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, they refused to believe her account. Winfrey once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well. At 13, after suffering what she described as 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 b

Main article: The Oprah Winfrey Show Working in local media, Winfrey was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV), where she often covered the same stories as John Tesh, who worked at a competing Nashville station. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news. In 1977, she was removed as co-anchor and worked in lower profile positions at the station. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars. In 1984, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago, after being hired by that station's general manager, Dennis Swanson. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and expanded to a full hour. The first episode was broadcast nationwide on September 8, 1986. Winfrey's syndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. Their much-publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. According to Time magazine in August 1988: [https://web.archive.org/web/20091121010155/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968069,00.html \"Oprah Winfrey: Lady with a Calling\"], ''Time'', August 8, 1988. Retrieved September 17, 2010."}},"i":0}}]}' id="mwAbE">.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 32px}.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;margin-top:0}@media(min-width:500px){.mw-parser-output .templatequotecite{padding-left:1.6em}}Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue ... What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye ... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session. TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said: "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy, and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular." Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue

Film Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The Alice Walker novel later became a Broadway musical which opened in late 2005, with Winfrey credited as a producer. In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and moderate to good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. While promoting the movie, co-star Thandiwe Newton described Winfrey as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade." Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2005. The made-for-television film was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role. In late 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output pact to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries, and movies exclusively for HBO. In 2013, Winfrey starred in the film The Butler directed by Lee Daniels. Though her performance garnered significant Oscar buzz, she was not nominated for the award. Oprah voiced Gussie the goose in Charlotte's Web (2006) and voiced Judge Bumbleton in Bee Movie (2007), co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice for the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life for Discovery. In 2018, Winfrey starred as Mrs. Which in the film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time. She also lent her voice to an animated virtual-reality short film written and directed by Eric Darnell, starring John Legend, titled Crow: The Legend, telling a Native American origin tale. Publishing and writing Winfrey has co-authored five books. At the announcement of a weight-loss book in 2005, co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by the autobiography of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Winfrey on her "The Life You Want" tour in October 2014 In 2015, her memoir, The Life You Want, was announced following on her tour of the same name, and scheduled for publication in 2017, but was "indefinitely postponed" in 2016. Winfrey publishes the magazine Oprah Daily and from 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O At Home.

Homes Aerial view of Oprah's Montecito estate Oprah's extensive and continuously evolving real-estate portfolio has garnered heightened attention throughout her life and career, with many prominent industry outlets branding her a "tycoon" regarding her investments which as of 2022, are estimated to total approximately $127 million. As her talk show was beginning, Oprah first purchased a condominium in Chicago's Water Tower Place in 1985, before purchasing the condos adjoining and directly below it in 1992, 1993, and 1994, respectively. In 1988, she purchased an 164-acre property including main and guest residences, orchard, and stables in Rolling Prairie, Indiana as her weekend refuge. In 1992, she purchased an 80-acre compound in Telluride, Colorado, which she would go on to sell in approximately late 2000. In 1994, she also purchased an apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. Between 1996 and 2000 she purchased a total of five condos in different development areas of Fisher Island, Florida. In 2000, through her Chicago-based LLC Overground Railroad, Oprah purchased her friend Gayle King an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. In 2001, Oprah sold all five of her Fisher Island condos and purchased what would become her "main home base" she has also called "The Promised Land" (where she currently lives as of 2022), a (then) 42-acre (17 ha) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California. Additionally that year, she also purchased homes in both Elmwood Park, Illinois and Merrillville, Indiana for other family members and friends. Similarly, in 2002, she purchased her father's home in Franklin, Tennessee and a lakefront condo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2003 she listed her compound in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, and sold it in 2004. From 2003 to 2005, Oprah acquired several properties totaling 163 acres in Kula and Hana, Hawaii as well as a penthouse apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2005, she purchased a home in Douglasville, Georgia which was gifted in 2011 to a family member. In 2006, Oprah purchased a co-op apartment along Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, reportedly with plans to permanently move there from her prior adjoined-condo unit in Water Tower Place for the duration of her show; for reasons unknown, the property sat entirely unused until she sold it in 2012. In 2008, she sold her penthouse apartment in Atlanta. That year, she also listed Gayle King's estate and purchased her (through her second LLC Sophie's Penthouse) a penthouse apartment in midtown Manhattan, New York City which would later be sold in 2012. In early 2014, she listed her combined-unit Chicago duplex on the market. Later that year, Oprah came back to Telluride, Colorado to purchase a 60-acre lot with plans to build on the property. A lawsuit filed against her that year by a retired nuclear physicist living in the area regarding trail access rights was dismissed later that year with the judge citing little case law to support his case, among other issue

Rankings Winfrey at the White House for the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and TIME, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by The American Spectator, "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2011 by TIME. Winfrey is the only person to have appeared in the latter list on ten occasions. At the end of the 20th century, Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". In 2007, USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter-century. Ladies' Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and then Senator Barack Obama in 2007 said she "may be the most influential woman in the country". In 1998, Winfrey became the first woman and first African American to top Entertainment Weekly's list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes named her the world's most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2013. As chairman of Harpo Inc., she was named the most powerful woman in entertainment by The Hollywood Reporter in 2008. She has been listed as one of the world's 100 most powerful women by Forbes, ranking 14th in 2014 and 31st in 2023. In 2010, Life magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who changed the world, alongside Jesus Christ, Elvis Presley, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list. Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments. Interviewed by The Guardian in 2006, Dowd said: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protégé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah – she is a straight ahead success story." Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope. Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, I think, in the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in the world, not just in America. That's – anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through the roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on her own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful." In 2005, Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked No. 9 overall on the list of greatest Americans. However, polls estimating Winfrey's personal popula