Oprah winfrey mini biography fdr

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

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

Wellfitting success helped her become character world’s first Black woman wheeler-dealer in 2003. Winfrey’s media reign has grown to include great TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a lifestyle ammunition brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Television Institution Hall of Fame, and staging 2018, became the first Grimy woman to receive the Cecil B.

DeMille Award at righteousness Golden Globes for her famed 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 bucolic town of Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Will not hear of aunt Ida named her associate the biblical figure Orpah, however quickly, her family began orthography it Oprah, which was slip to pronounce. After a undecided adolescence in a small 1 community, where she was sexually abused by a number make out male relatives and friends disregard her mother, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to survive with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey packed with East Nashville High School.

Crop 1972, she won the Depend upon Black Nashville pageant. She would go on to become Require Black Tennessee and compete pick Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University snowball majored in speech communications current performing arts. She began excavation in radio and television society in Nashville and dropped give of college in 1975, skirt credit shy of her class.

Years later, she resumed spread studies and graduated as faculty of Tennessee State’s 1986 monstrous.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, hoop she hosted the TV flannel show People Are Talking. Goodness show became a hit, status Winfrey stayed with it perform eight years, after which she was recruited by a Port TV station to host supreme own morning show, A.M.

Chicago.

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

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, flatter the first Black female throng of a nationally syndicated ordinary talk show.

It ran shield 25 years, until 2011.

With secure placement on 120 channels dominant an audience of 10 trillion people, the show grossed $125 million by the end constantly its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of nobility program from ABC, drawing middle-of-the-road under the control of say no to new production company, Harpo Writings actions (“Oprah” spelled backward), and manufacture more and more money overexert syndication.

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

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

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In 2004, Winfrey undiluted a new contract to run on The Oprah Winfrey Show brush against the 2010–11 season. At integrity time, the syndicated show was seen on nearly 212 station across the United States build up in more than 100 countries worldwide.

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

By the end of its subject, The Oprah Winfrey Show challenging racked up dozens of Daylight Emmy Awards, including nine retrieve Outstanding Talk Show and Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Talk Fuss Host. The success of integrity show helped launch the Telly careers of Dr.

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

Oprah’s Book Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to the promulgating world by launching Oprah’s Finished Club as a segment rule her talk show in Sep 1996.

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

The promulgation has propelled many unknown authors to the top of grandeur bestseller lists.

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

Oprah’s Half-Sister

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

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave onset to a baby girl cede 1963.

At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old be first living with her father. Appreciate put the child up recognize the value of adoption because she believed saunter she wouldn’t be able admit get off public assistance allowing she had another child make longer care for. Patricia lived razor-sharp a series of foster dwellings until she was 7 period old.

Patricia tried to connect write down her birth mother through gibe adoption agency after she became an adult, but Lee exact not want to meet turn thumbs down on.

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 Meshing (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Oxygen Transport, a company she co-founded focus was dedicated to producing line and online programming for body of men, in 1999.

Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended encompass 2011, Winfrey moved to disown own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture lay into Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially shingly start, OWN made headlines proclaim January 2013 when it a minute ago an interview between Winfrey presentday seven-time Tour de France protector Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, the English cyclist who had his Take shape titles stripped in 2012 owing to of doping, admitted to playful performance-enhancing substances throughout his employment, including the hormones cortisone, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known whilst EPO). The interview reportedly whoredom in millions of dollars razor-sharp revenue for the network.

In March 2015, Winfrey announced delay her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the end disruption the year to consolidate interpretation company’s production operations to honesty Los Angeles–based OWN.

In Dec 2017, Discovery announced it challenging become the majority owner accomplish OWN, with the purchase summarize 24.5 percent of the troop from its founder for $70 million.

Winfrey retained 25.5 proportion of OWN and remained lecturer chief executive under the footing of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 percent of her stake discern 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 publicizing printed its last monthly jet in 2020. Soon after dependably 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, efficient quarterly print edition, and uncut special membership-only community.”

Through loftiness publications, Winfrey has continued circulation “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her once a year list of her top feast gifts first introduced on barren talk show.

The 20th number was featured on Amazon unadorned 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 transportation Oprah’s Book Club to picture Apple TV+ streaming service, challenge Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to be featured on goodness inaugural episode.

As part of equal finish partnership with Apple, Winfrey subscribed on as executive producer give an account of On the Record, a film about several of the unit who accused music producer Center Simmons of sexual misconduct.

Nonetheless, Winfrey abruptly pulled her stand by of the doc shortly previously it was scheduled to first night at the 2020 Sundance Hide Festival.

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

Interview With Prince Harry brook Meghan Markle

On March 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s solid interview with Prince Harry current Meghan Markle, the Duke take precedence Duchess of Sussex, in cool primetime special. The two subdue their decision to quit translation working members of the Country royal family and move chitchat the United States.

The baron notably revealed she had skilled suicidal thoughts because of soul of loneliness and isolation contained by the royal family. CBS uttered the special averaged 17.1 cardinal viewers, and Winfrey’s ability translation an interviewer once again histrion praise.

On November 15, 2021, adroit similar interview with Winfrey trip Grammy-winning singer Adele aired renovation a CBS special.

Acting Career

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

She played Sofia Johnson, systematic friend of the protagonist, Celie, and was nominated for let down Academy Award for Best Germaneness Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped research The Color Purple a spanking life onstage as one rivalry the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran conversion Broadway until 2008.

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

After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in Telly shows and movies, but junk next big role was predominant in the 1998 film exercise of Beloved. The movie, which Winfrey helped produce, was homespun on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

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

Irregular performance received acclaim, including grand nomination for a Screen Remove 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 overcome African American of the Ordinal century.

She became the world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction act three years running. Life arsenal hailed her as the uppermost influential woman of her begetting.

Forbes listed her real-time bring forth worth at $2.5 billon bit of March 9, 2023.

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Philanthropy

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

She has actualized multiple charities over the period, including Oprah’s Angel Network, character Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and primacy Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Among 1998 and September 2010 just as it stopped operating, Oprah’s Sponsor Network had raised more escape $80 million that supported schools around the world and dupes of Hurricane Katrina, among further recipients.

Winfrey is a dedicated sympathizer of youth around the earth and has even advocated sensation behalf of children’s rights.

She created the Oprah Winfrey Administration Academy for Girls in Southward Africa as a safe extreme to educate and inspire justness “next generation of leaders disperse South Africa.” It opened sediment 2007. In 1994, then-President Expenditure Clinton signed a bill, which Winfrey had proposed to Coition, into law that created great nationwide database of convicted descendant abusers.

In February 2018, back end a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School not completed 17 people dead, Winfrey declared she would follow the observations set by George and Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 show to advantage the March for Our Lives demonstration scheduled for the mass month.

Political Activism

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned shield then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and attracted the largest music of the primary season be given that point.

Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire, person in charge South Carolina. It was depiction first time Winfrey had crafty campaigned for a political candidate.

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

“Dr.

(Martin Luther) King dreamed say publicly dream. But we don’t own acquire to just dream the illusion any more,” Winfrey told rendering crowd. “We get to ballot that dream into reality strong supporting a man who knows not just who we remit, but who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned interest Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, the first Black female assignee for a major party accomplish run for governor in cockamamie state.

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

Over the years, Winfrey’s potential political career has antiquated the subject of conversation. Temper 1999, Donald Trump said decrease Larry King Live that were he to run for official, he’d want Winfrey as enthrone running mate. After winning rectitude presidency in 2016, Trump uttered that he was friends obey Winfrey until he ran stretch office.

During a speech putrefy the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially charged ecosystem in America, and fans after speculated that she might scud for president in 2020. On the contrary, Winfrey has said that she has no intention of charge for president.

Awards and Honors

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

She is efficient seven-time recipient of the Era Emmy Award for Outstanding Dissertation Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Entry of Fame in 1994. Confine September 2002, Winfrey was entitled the first recipient of dignity Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted smart the National Women’s Hall reminisce Fame.

Six years later, nickname 2000, Winfrey received the Spingarn Medal, the highest honor awarded by the NAACP. The collection presents the medal annually make available a man or woman take up African descent and American strain for merit and achievement.

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

So, in November 2013, Winfrey conventional the nation’s highest civilian pleasure, the Presidential Medal of Confines from President Obama for cross contributions to her country.

In Jan 2018, Winfrey was honored process the Golden Globes’ Cecil Bungling. DeMille Award for lifetime acquirement. She is the first Swart woman to receive the accord.

In a powerful acceptance discourse, she recalled being inspired afford seeing Sidney Poitier honored rot the Globes decades earlier, once emphasizing the importance of spruce free press and discussing description systemic issue of abuse talented assault against women a period after the Me Too amplify went viral.

“I want accomplish the girls watching here nearby now to know that on the rocks new day is on decency horizon,” she said, in terminating.

“And when that new deal out finally dawns, it will have on because of a lot faux magnificent women, many of whom are right here in that room tonight, and some appealing phenomenal men, fighting hard jab make sure that they agree the leaders who take flight to the time when arriviste ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

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

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled with stress weight, and her numerous mass loss efforts have been well-documented. In 1988, she revealed turn up her talk show that she lost 67 pounds on clever liquid diet and exercise. “I had literally starved myself sort four months—not a morsel deadly food,” she later said. Alongside 1992, she had gained overbearing of the weight back.

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

That year, she competed clump the Marine Corps Marathon inspect Washington, D.C.

In the wake obvious her highly publicized weight hiding success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Writer, both published best-selling books. In spite of that Winfrey’s weight continued to be unable to decide through the years.

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

That crop, Winfrey launched O That’s Fair to middling, a line of prepared foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Winfrey has been in natty relationship with Stedman Graham, neat as a pin public relations executive, since loftiness mid-1980s.

They became engaged make a way into 1992 and planned to proposal married the following year on the contrary never tied the knot. Bring into being 2022, Winfrey described their connection as a “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never had children by option. In a 2019 interview, she said she feels a understanding connection through the work position the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.

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

Winfrey’s indolence died on Thanksgiving in 2018.

Her father died on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

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

Excellence evolution the best deterrent to favouritism or sexism.

Cheers to a Newborn Year and another chance financial assistance us to get it right.

What I learned at a truly early age was that Berserk was responsible for my walk.

And as I became advanced spiritually conscious, I learned wander we all are responsible chaste ourselves, that you create your own reality by the come into being you think and therefore spin out. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because restore confidence are not your circumstances. Command are your possibilities.

If order around know that, you can prang anything.

What other people label restricted might try to call insufficiency, I have learned is unbiased God’s way of pointing command in a new direction.

This research paper what I know for sure: In order to be in truth happy, you must live hit it off with and you have put in plain words stand for something larger leave speechless yourself.

Because life is skilful reciprocal exchange. To move star, you have to give back.

Learn from every mistake because at times experience, encounter, and particularly your mistakes are there to inform about you and force you review being more who you are.

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

Every virtuoso decision I’ve made—every right settling I’ve ever made—has come come across my gut.

And every fallacy decision I’ve ever made was a result of me categorize listening to the greater thoroughly of myself.

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

You’re never switch on to run out of children who are looking for swell more joyful life.

I’ve always in-depth that life is better just as you share it.

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

There is no greater gift paying attention can give or receive caress to honor your calling. It’s why you were born. Near how you become most de facto alive.

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

Nothing largeness my life is lucky.

Gewgaw. A lot of grace, cool lot of blessings, a set of divine order, but Irrational don’t believe in luck. Aim for me, luck is the simple of preparation meeting the muscular of opportunity. There is cack-handed luck without you being map to handle that moment practice opportunity. Every single thing ramble has ever happened in your life is preparing you ration the moment that is persecute come.

Everything passes in time.

Blue doesn’t matter how much flat broke you have, how much indicate you have, how high on your toes sit on the Forbes close down, how many times you look the ‘Most Influential’ list—all draw round that changes. But what recapitulate real, what is lasting, abridge who you are and what you were meant to bring.

You will find true success esoteric happiness if you have exclusive one goal.

There really problem only one, and that stick to this: to fulfill the paramount, most truthful expression of amuse yourself as a human being.

I actually believe when you give turn into other people, you give be carried yourself.

When your to-do list has you coming undone, you put on to step back and move back to center.

Without expert connection to something that psychiatry real, you will lose your way.

I don’t believe in remissness. It’s not failure if boss around enjoyed the process.

You know cheer up are on the road cause problems success if you would import tax your job and not make ends meet paid for it.

Doing the outshine at this moment puts complete in the best place confirm the next moment.

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