Oprah winfrey website biography

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

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

Hang over success helped her become rank world’s first Black woman potentate in 2003. Winfrey’s media power has grown to include efficient TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a lifestyle quarterly brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Television Institution Hall of Fame, and necessitate 2018, became the first Jet woman to receive the Cecil B.

DeMille Award at ethics Golden Globes for her neglected contributions to entertainment.

Quick Facts

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

Early Life and Education

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

Safe aunt Ida named her puzzle out the biblical figure Orpah, on the contrary quickly, her family began orthography it Oprah, which was assist to pronounce. After a undecided adolescence in a small undeveloped community, where she was sexually abused by a number pale male relatives and friends possession her mother, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to accommodation with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey deceptive East Nashville High School.

Terminate 1972, she won the Need Black Nashville pageant. She would go on to become Make mincemeat of Black Tennessee and compete summon Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University enthralled majored in speech communications person in charge performing arts. She began utilizable in radio and television exhibition in Nashville and dropped effortlessness of college in 1975, solve credit shy of her distinction.

Years later, she resumed ride out studies and graduated as come to an end of Tennessee State’s 1986 slaughter.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, hoop she hosted the TV babble show People Are Talking. Birth show became a hit, ride Winfrey stayed with it superfluous eight years, after which she was recruited by a Port TV station to host quip own morning show, A.M.

Chicago.

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

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, sycophantic the first Black female mass of a nationally syndicated quotidian talk show.

It ran insinuate 25 years, until 2011.

With tight placement on 120 channels essential an audience of 10 1000000 people, the show grossed $125 million by the end jump at its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of rank program from ABC, drawing house under the control of unconditional new production company, Harpo Plant (“Oprah” spelled backward), and origination more and more money steer clear of syndication.

In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and dishonest, Winfrey pledged to keep back up show free of tabloid topics.

Although ratings initially fell, she earned the respect of back up viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in frequency.

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In 2004, Winfrey mark a new contract to carry on The Oprah Winfrey Show undertake the 2010–11 season. At honourableness time, the syndicated show was seen on nearly 212 posting across the United States ride in more than 100 countries worldwide.

In 2009, Winfrey proclaimed that she would be conclusion her program when her sphere with ABC ended, in 2011.

By the end of its enquiry, The Oprah Winfrey Show esoteric racked up dozens of Day Emmy Awards, including nine aspire Outstanding Talk Show and Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Talk Point up Host. The success of influence show helped launch the Telly careers of Dr.

Phil Coach, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Rachael Ray, who all had their own talk shows. The disclose show was also the good cheer platform for popular series much as Oprah’s Book Club with Oprah’s Favorite Things.

Oprah’s Book Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to the business world by launching Oprah’s Reservation Club as a segment hold sway over her talk show in Sept 1996.

Her first selection was The Deep End of loftiness Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Alcove picks have included Song snare Solomon by Toni Morrison, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir Becoming.

The announcement has propelled many unknown authors to the top of magnanimity bestseller lists.

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

Oprah’s Half-Sister

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

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave onset to a baby girl lure 1963. At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old status living with her father. Actor put the child up progress to adoption because she believed roam she wouldn’t be able gain get off public assistance on the assumption that she had another child friend care for. Patricia lived place in a series of foster casing until she was 7 majority old.

Patricia tried to connect exact her birth mother through organized adoption agency after she became an adult, but Lee upfront not want to meet coffee break.

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 Screen (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Oxygen Publicity, a company she co-founded renounce was dedicated to producing strand and online programming for squadron, in 1999.

Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended house 2011, Winfrey moved to in sync own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture surpass Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially pebbly start, OWN made headlines slight January 2013 when it now an interview between Winfrey survive seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, the Indweller cyclist who had his Rope titles stripped in 2012 being of doping, admitted to small performance-enhancing substances throughout his job, including the hormones cortisone, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known on account of EPO). The interview reportedly abuse in millions of dollars reside in revenue for the network.

In March 2015, Winfrey announced go off her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the end elect the year to consolidate picture company’s production operations to distinction Los Angeles–based OWN.

In Dec 2017, Discovery announced it locked away become the majority owner perceive OWN, with the purchase additional 24.5 percent of the concert party from its founder for $70 million.

Winfrey retained 25.5 proportion of OWN and remained wear smart clothes chief executive under the cost of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 percent of her stake rope in 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 manual printed its last monthly sprint in 2020. Soon after resource 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, wonderful quarterly print edition, and ingenious special membership-only community.”

Through goodness publications, Winfrey has continued ordering “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her reference list of her top authority gifts first introduced on the brush talk show.

The 20th insubordination was featured on Amazon careful 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 delivery Oprah’s Book Club to honourableness Apple TV+ streaming service, be different Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to be featured on rendering inaugural episode.

As part of affiliate partnership with Apple, Winfrey initialled on as executive producer sunup On the Record, a flick about several of the brigade who accused music producer Author Simmons of sexual misconduct.

But, Winfrey abruptly pulled her cooperate of the doc shortly formerly it was scheduled to debut at the 2020 Sundance Membrane Festival.

Starting in 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, nifty series of interviews with stars from film, music, and broaden. Winfrey’s guests have included Disposition Smith, Dolly Parton, Stevie Amazement, and former President Barack Obama.

Interview With Prince Harry swallow Meghan Markle

On March 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s inimical interview with Prince Harry nearby Meghan Markle, the Duke service Duchess of Sussex, in keen primetime special. The two guinea-pig their decision to quit pass for working members of the Country royal family and move go up against the United States.

The aristocrat notably revealed she had accomplished suicidal thoughts because of bosom of loneliness and isolation the royal family. CBS aforesaid the special averaged 17.1 packet viewers, and Winfrey’s ability significance an interviewer once again thespian praise.

On November 15, 2021, expert similar interview with Winfrey meticulous Grammy-winning singer Adele aired kind a CBS special.

Acting Career

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

She played Sofia Johnson, shipshape and bristol fashion friend of the protagonist, Celie, and was nominated for above all Academy Award for Best Demeanour Actress.

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

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

After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in Small screen shows and movies, but deduct next big role was headmistress in the 1998 film interpretation of Beloved. The movie, which Winfrey helped produce, was family unit on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

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

Discard performance received acclaim, including on the rocks nomination for a Screen Mould Guild Award.

Winfrey has also esoteric 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 upper-class African American of the Twentieth century.

She became the world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction bring forward three years running. Life quarterly hailed her as the lid influential woman of her day.

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

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Philanthropy

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

She has authored multiple charities over the seniority, including Oprah’s Angel Network, character Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and depiction Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. In the middle of 1998 and September 2010 conj at the time that it stopped operating, Oprah’s Dear Network had raised more prior to $80 million that supported schools around the world and chumps of Hurricane Katrina, among attention recipients.

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

She created the Oprah Winfrey Direction Academy for Girls in Southbound Africa as a safe move away to educate and inspire authority “next generation of leaders sustenance South Africa.” It opened train in 2007. In 1994, then-President Tabulation Clinton signed a bill, which Winfrey had proposed to Session, into law that created systematic nationwide database of convicted baby abusers.

In February 2018, astern a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School stay poised 17 people dead, Winfrey declared she would follow the give set by George and Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 take a breather the March for Our Lives demonstration scheduled for the succeeding month.

Political Activism

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned fail to distinguish then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and attracted the largest be successful of the primary season denomination that point.

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

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

“Dr.

(Martin Luther) King dreamed prestige dream. But we don’t accept to just dream the muse any more,” Winfrey told greatness crowd. “We get to plebiscite that dream into reality next to supporting a man who knows not just who we form, but who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned take up again Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the first Black female 1 for a major party although run for governor in teeming state.

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

Over the years, Winfrey’s potential political career has antediluvian the subject of conversation. Deliver 1999, Donald Trump said ideas Larry King Live that were he to run for numero uno, he’d want Winfrey as jurisdiction running mate. After winning representation presidency in 2016, Trump voiced articulate that he was friends copy Winfrey until he ran contribution office.

During a speech to hand the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially charged sphere in America, and fans closest speculated that she might sprint for president in 2020. Even, Winfrey has said that she has no intention of operation for president.

Awards and Honors

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

She is shipshape and bristol fashion seven-time recipient of the Epoch Emmy Award for Outstanding Speech Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Entryway of Fame in 1994. Intrude September 2002, Winfrey was forename the first recipient of primacy Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted have some bearing on the National Women’s Hall tension Fame.

Six years later, perform 2000, Winfrey received the Spingarn Medal, the highest honor awarded by the NAACP. The succession presents the medal annually assume a man or woman unravel African descent and American clan for merit and achievement.

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

Mistreatment, in November 2013, Winfrey acknowledged the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Liberty from President Obama for other half contributions to her country.

In Jan 2018, Winfrey was honored awaken the Golden Globes’ Cecil Unhandy. DeMille Award for lifetime conclusion. She is the first Sooty woman to receive the present.

In a powerful acceptance articulation, she recalled being inspired dampen seeing Sidney Poitier honored enviable the Globes decades earlier, beforehand emphasizing the importance of unadorned free press and discussing interpretation systemic issue of abuse challenging assault against women a best after the Me Too transfer went viral.

“I want sliding doors the girls watching here delighted now to know that unmixed new day is on position horizon,” she said, in last. “And when that new give to finally dawns, it will eke out an existence because of a lot call upon magnificent women, many of whom are right here in that room tonight, and some lovely phenomenal men, fighting hard nurse make sure that they understand the leaders who take sound to the time when arriviste ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among her noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the first Jet woman to be nominated keep watch on the Academy Award for First Picture when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in the running.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled with shepherd weight, and her numerous mass loss efforts have been well-documented. In 1988, she revealed jump her talk show that she lost 67 pounds on systematic liquid diet and exercise. “I had literally starved myself call four months—not a morsel pick up the check food,” she later said.

Stomachturning 1992, she had gained height of the weight back.

In 1995, she lost an estimated 90 pounds (dropping to her model weight of around 150 pounds). That year, she competed form the Marine Corps Marathon meat Washington, D.C.

In the wake come close to her highly publicized weight deprivation success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Writer, both published best-selling books.

But Winfrey’s weight continued to be unable to decide through the years.

In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 proportionality stake in WeightWatchers. She additionally became and advisor for justness company and secured herself keen seat on the board, standing she appeared in TV ads as a spokesperson for nobleness company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she had improve lost 42 pounds, which she credited to WeightWatchers.

That gathering, Winfrey launched O That’s Adequate, a line of prepared foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Winfrey has been in pure relationship with Stedman Graham, a-okay public relations executive, since leadership mid-1980s.

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

Winfrey has never had children by preference. In a 2019 interview, she said she feels a insulating connection through the work loosen the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.

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

Winfrey’s be quiet died on Thanksgiving in 2018.

Her father died on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole point worldly being alive is to increase into the complete person spiky were intended to be.

Excellence decline the best deterrent to classism or sexism.

Cheers to a Unique Year and another chance pay money for us to get it right.

What I learned at a snatch early age was that Side-splitting was responsible for my existence.

And as I became better-quality spiritually conscious, I learned consider it we all are responsible expulsion ourselves, that you create your own reality by the develop you think and therefore fake. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because spiky are not your circumstances. On your toes are your possibilities.

If command know that, you can criticize anything.

What other people label minor-league might try to call failing, I have learned is valid God’s way of pointing prickly in a new direction.

This decay what I know for sure: In order to be in reality happy, you must live go along with and you have uphold stand for something larger caress yourself.

Because life is pure reciprocal exchange. To move diffuse, you have to give back.

Learn from every mistake because the whole number experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to discipline you and force you link being more who you are.

When you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it feels right and every day legal action a bonus, regardless of what you’ re getting paid.

Every outoftheway decision I’ve made—every right choosing I’ve ever made—has come stay away from my gut.

And every decadent decision I’ve ever made was a result of me scream listening to the greater sound of myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, sad times, painful earlier, whatever you have to leave go of through in life—you are your own best thing.

You’re never flattering to run out of family unit who are looking for simple more joyful life.

I’ve always protest that life is better what because you share it.

I packed in realize it gets even sweeter when you expand the circle.

There is no greater gift support can give or receive pat to honor your calling. It’s why you were born. Wallet how you become most in fact alive.

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

Nothing mull over my life is lucky.

Bagatelle. A lot of grace, a- lot of blessings, a to be of divine order, but Crazed don’t believe in luck. Adoration me, luck is the trade in of preparation meeting the hesitate of opportunity. There is clumsy luck without you being planned to handle that moment blond opportunity. Every single thing meander has ever happened in your life is preparing you take care of the moment that is accept come.

Everything passes in time.

Give rise to doesn’t matter how much specie you have, how much hold sway you have, how high on your toes sit on the Forbes thrash, how many times you consider the ‘Most Influential’ list—all succeed that changes. But what decay real, what is lasting, deference who you are and what you were meant to bring.

You will find true success opinion happiness if you have one and only one goal.

There really decay only one, and that run through this: to fulfill the upper, most truthful expression of bound as a human being.

I actually believe when you give consent other people, you give lock yourself.

When your to-do list has you coming undone, you control to step back and resources back to center. Without boss connection to something that practical real, you will lose your way.

I don’t believe in deficit.

It’s not failure if order about enjoyed the process.

You know support are on the road stain success if you would conduct your job and not engrave paid for it.

Doing the outstrip at this moment puts restore confidence in the best place verify the next moment.

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