Oprah Winfrey

American media celebrity and businessperson

• Born: January 29, 1954
• Place of Birth: Kosciusko, Mississippi

Winfrey became a widely popular talk-show host and actor, as well one of the richest women in the world, after forming a successful media career that started with jobs as a television news reporter-anchor and morning-show host. Her multimedia production company, Harpo, was the first such company owned by an African American. She later created the television channel the Oprah Winfrey Network and shifted her career focus to producing and philanthropy.

Early Life

Oprah Winfrey was born to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey, a young unmarried couple barely out of their teens. Vernon was in the armed forces when a postcard from Vernita notified him that he had become a father. Winfrey’s first name was to have been Orpah, but a misspelling on her birth certificate renamed the child Oprah.

Vernita decided to move to the north to find work. Intent on settling in Milwaukee, she left Winfrey in the care of the child’s paternal grandmother. According to Winfrey, the influence of her elderly caretaker was an important element in her life. She described her grandmother as disciplined, strong, and religious, and she was raised to be a churchgoer. As a child, she proved to be intelligent, articulate, and animated. She learned to read early and became a voracious reader. Her quick mind was never idle, and she craved mental challenges. Her school environment soon proved to be restrictive, and she found the lack of adequate mental stimuli stifling and confining.

At home, Winfrey was under the strict care of her grandmother, whose caretaking techniques included living by the adage that children were “to be seen and not heard.” The rod was not to be spared, if the occasion warranted its use. The strong-willed child resented her restrictive environment and ultimately proved to be too difficult and recalcitrant for her grandmother to handle. Her grandmother decided that Oprah would have to move to Milwaukee to live with her mother.

Life in Milwaukee was very different from the kind of life Winfrey had known in rural Mississippi. Vernita, who had little money, lived in a single room. Living without enough money and the comforts of her grandmother’s home made Winfrey more rebellious. Vernita soon decided that because both she and Winfrey’s paternal grandmother had been unable to handle what they deemed a recalcitrant child, it would be best for everyone for Winfrey to live with her father; she moved yet again.

Life in Tennessee with her father and stepmother proved to be good for Winfrey. They encouraged her in her academic work and provided a loving yet firm environment. She thrived in her new surroundings, excelling academically and socially. After a year, she went to visit her mother for summer vacation. When it was time for Winfrey to return to Tennessee, Vernita refused to let her return to her father. She wanted Winfrey back. Reluctantly, Vernon gave in.

Life immediately turned sour for Winfrey. Her self-esteem suffered badly. She felt unwanted and believed that her lighter-skinned sister was treated better than she was. She took refuge in reading books. The quality of her academic work never decreased, although she suffered from many years of sexual abuse by male relatives and acquaintances. She suffered in silence. She manifested her inner suffering and rage by lying and destroying property. Her mother’s confusion and exasperation with her increased, and soon it was decided that alternate living arrangements would have to be made. The move back to Tennessee to live with her father in 1968, however, did not work out as well as the move in 1962. Winfrey had difficulty readjusting to her new environment.

In her senior year at Nashville’s East High School, Winfrey decided that she wanted her future to be in entertainment. Her aspirations were well on the way to being realized. She excelled academically and won several titles, including that of Miss Black Tennessee. She read the news for the local radio station while she was still in her teens. Despite her decision to attend college outside Tennessee, her father insisted that she enroll in Tennessee State University in Nashville. With an oratorical scholarship in hand, Winfrey entered Tennessee State as an English major.

Life’s Work

During her college years, Winfrey worked for several media organizations. She was employed in Nashville by radio stations WVOL and WLAC and later worked as a television reporter-anchor for WTVE-TV. Only a few months before she was to graduate from Tennessee State, she accepted a position with WJ2-TV in Baltimore. Her enthusiasm and personality attracted many admirers within the journalistic community, and she quickly became a favorite with the public. She became the cohost of a local morning show, People Are Talking.

Winfrey’s popularity soon extended outside Baltimore. After having sent demo tapes to media markets throughout the country, she was asked to host AM Chicago. She now was in the national arena, competing with television talk-show hosts such as Phil Donahue. She quickly won the ratings war against Donahue, who left Chicago in 1985 to relocate in New York.

Winfrey decided that she wanted to work as an actor. In 1985, she requested a leave of absence from her show to costar in Steven Spielberg’s film The Color Purple , which went on to garner extensive critical acclaim. The film, based on Alice Walker’s novel, portrayed strong Black American females but depicted, to some controversy, many of its Black American male characters as abusive and weak. Winfrey was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film.

Winfrey returned to television, where her popularity led to AM Chicago being renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show . In 1986, the show became nationally syndicated, and by 1988, Winfrey was the highest paid entertainer in show business. The show continued as a hit into the first decade of the twenty-first century.

In 1988, Winfrey revealed that she had lost sixty-seven pounds, appearing on her show in tight blue jeans and wheeling a wagon loaded with fat. Only a few months later, however, she had regained all of her former weight, and more. The public became obsessed with how much she weighed, and it became a frequent subject of tabloid journalism. In 1992, her weight peaked at 237 pounds, and she checked into a Telluride, Colorado, spa. Bob Greene became her personal trainer and a few months later, Winfrey had completed a half-marathon in San Diego, California. By 1993, she had lost ninety pounds. She shared her success in becoming fit with her talk-show audience and in Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life (1996), which she coauthored with Greene.

In 1996, Winfrey created Oprah’s Book Club, a monthly reading group that began with discussion of Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean (1996). The book club’s popularity dramatically increased Winfrey’s television audience and made best sellers of many of the club’s selections. The club also inspired many people to form reading groups of their own. In 1999, Winfrey received the National Book Foundation’s Fiftieth Anniversary Gold Medal for encouraging reading. In 2002, the book club went on hiatus and resumed in 2003, featuring a new format of three or four books per year. The club was the center of controversy in 2001, when author Jonathan Franzen expressed dismay that his novel (The Corrections) had been chosen by the club, which he considered not literary enough and, therefore, too popular. In 2005, James Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces (2003), a book club selection, was determined to be largely fabricated, causing controversy not only because Frey lied about his life experiences (or duped his readers into believing so) but also because of the general glut of memoirs on the market.

Winfrey’s talk show had experienced other controversies, including in 1996, when Winfrey made a remark regarding her new repulsion to hamburgers on a show examining mad cow disease. Along with that show’s guest, Howard Lyman, she was sued by Texas cattle ranchers for causing sales of cattle to dip precipitously. Winfrey and Lyman were found not liable in the case, however.

Winfrey made many firsts as an African American woman in business. In addition to owning and producing The Oprah Winfrey Show, she formed her own company, Harpo Productions, in 1988. She ventured into film and television production, producing and costarring in the hit television film The Women of Brewster Place (1989), based on the novel by African American author Gloria Naylor. In 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the acclaimed film version of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved (1987). She also appeared in There Are No Children Here (1993), based on a book by Alex Kotlowitz, and Before Women Had Wings (1997), based on the novel by Connie May Fowler. In 1997, Harpo launched Oprah Winfrey Presents, a series of made-for-television films and specials that included Tuesdays with Morrie (1999), based on a best-selling book by Mitch Albom, Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), from the classic novel by Zora Neale Hurston, Legends Who Paved the Way (2015), Becoming Michelle Obama (2018), and When They See Us Now (2019). In 2002, Harpo branched out into creating a television series with Dr. Phil, a syndicated daytime talk show featuring Phil McGraw, a psychologist who had been a frequent guest on Winfrey’s talk show.

In February 2000, Winfrey founded Oxygen, a women’s cable network. Beginning in 2002, the network aired Oprah after the Show, which showed Winfrey and guests in informal after-show talks. Oxygen was purchased in 2007 by NBC Universal. Also in 2000, Winfrey created Oprah.com, a website covering her talk show, magazines, charities, book club, and other activities.

Winfrey also ventured into magazine publishing, onto Broadway, and onto satellite radio. In April 2000, in a joint venture with Hearst magazines, she launched O: The Oprah Magazine, which focused on self-improvement. The magazine presented issues similar to those discussed on her talk show, and many of the experts who appeared as guests on her show also had columns in the magazine. Financial adviser Suze Orman and physician Mehmet Oz, for example, both helped Winfrey as guest experts on her show and received a career boost from their associations with her. In 2004, O at Home, a spin-off magazine featuring home living, began publication.

In December 2005, a musical version of The Color Purple, produced by Winfrey, opened on Broadway. In April 2007, singer Fantasia Barrino, a winner of the hit reality show and competition American Idol, assumed the role of Celie in the Broadway production, and the musical toured nationally, beginning in Chicago. In September 2006, Winfrey established Oprah and Friends, a channel on XM Satellite Radio that presented a short weekly show by Winfrey and programs by many of the experts and consultants featured on her television show and in her magazines.

Winfrey was still hosting The Oprah Winfrey Show full-time in 2008 when she, along with Discovery Channel head David Zaslav, announced that they were working to transform the Discovery Health Channel into a new network, OWN. Unlike Winfrey's other endeavors, OWN was not an immediate success. After a delayed launch on January 1, 2011, the network had a rocky first year. Viewership was lower than Winfrey had expected. Realizing that she could not continue to host full-time and run a network simultaneously, Winfrey taped her final show in May 2011 and became CEO and chief creative officer of OWN in order to dedicate herself to improving its ratings. OWN's ratings began to improve, along with its profits, after the network aired an interview with cyclist and Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong during which he admitted to using performance-enhancing substances throughout his career.

In August 2013 she appeared as Gloria Gaines, spouse of the title character, in the premier of the award-winning feature film Lee Daniels' The Butler. Winfrey herself was nominated for several awards for her performance in the film, including a 2014 Screen Actors Guild Award. The following year, she appeared in and produced the historical drama Selma (2014), following Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for equal voting rights. The film earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Motion Picture of the Year.

In 2016, Winfrey joined the cast and crew of the OWN drama series Greenleaf, about a megachurch in Memphis, serving as an actor through 2017 and an executive producer through the series' conclusion in 2020. Also in 2016, she won a Tony Award for her work as the coproducer of a second Broadway revival of The Color Purple. She later appeared in the television biopic The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017), about the woman whose cells were used for medical breakthroughs in the 1950s, and the fantasy remake A Wrinkle in Time (2018), based on Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel of the same name. After additionally receiving the Golden Globe Awards' Cecil B. DeMille Award in honor of her lifetime achievement in 2018, she went on to begin hosting the interview series The Oprah Conversation in 2020 before conducting and airing a primetime, highly touted and discussed interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, in 2021. Her interview with Michelle Obama, part of the former First Lady's 2022 book tour, was aired as a special on Netflix in 2023. That same year, the docuseries The 1619 Project, which she executive produced, was released on the streaming service Hulu. In December 2023, The Color Purple was released, which Winfrey coproduced alongside Steven Spielberg, Scott Sanders, and Quincy Jones.

Winfrey has made multimillion-dollar donations to multiple causes. She supported the United Negro College Fund and formed a Tennessee State University scholarship fund for ten students annually who are deemed economically disadvantaged as well as academically talented. In 1997, she established Oprah’s Angel Network, which set up a college scholarship fund, helped build houses through Habitat for Humanity, helped people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, provided school uniforms for children in Africa, and helped build rural schools in ten different countries, including the Seven Fountains School, a new primary school for boys and girls in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. The Oprah Winfrey Foundation (OWF) funded ChristmasKindness South Africa 2002, an initiative that took Winfrey to South Africa, where she visited orphanages and schools and donated clothing and other supplies to children. In 2007, she opened the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a boarding school for disadvantaged girls in grades seven through twelve, near Johannesburg, South Africa. The academy, funded by OWF, enrolled more than 150 girls in its first year. That same year, however, the school endured scandal when a school matron named Tiny Virginia Makopo was charged with molesting several students. Makopo was later acquitted of the charges. Winfrey's philanthropy included about $400 million in donations to educational causes.

Winfrey also served as a spokesperson against child abuse. A victim of sexual and mental abuse as a child, she dedicated herself to helping those in similar situations. She testified on the subject of child abuse in front of a congressional committee in support of the National Child Protection Act, which was signed into law in December 1993. She continued to help educate the public about the many problems that children face in the United States, such as abuse, homelessness, and illness.

In addition to her work on screen, Winfrey has written a number of memoirs and self-help books, including Oprah: The Soul and Spirit of a Superstar (2000), What I Know for Sure (2014), and The Path Made Clear (2019). Along with Bruce D. Perry, she published What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing in 2021.

Significance

Winfrey’s rise to stardom may seem to many to have been quick and easy. However, her achievements came through effort and tenacity. She demonstrated that one’s dreams and aspirations can be realized if they are supported by diligence and persistence, making her quite a popular and well-admired person not only in the United States but also around the world.

Winfrey had an impact on millions of individuals through her television show. Her personal revelations and her emotional openness created a sense of intimacy and understanding between her and her audience. Her programs informed, enlightened, influenced, and inspired her predominantly female audience. Her talk show, like most of the talk shows that began airing in the 1980s, first concentrated on social issues such as racism, sexism, spousal abuse, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), violence in schools, drunk driving, political corruption, and child abuse. The Oprah Winfrey Show later grew to emphasize spiritually uplifting topics, positive experiences, and issues of self-improvement.

Winfrey rose to become an award-winning talk-show host and the first Black woman billionaire. In 2014, Forbes listed her number four on its list of the World’s Most Powerful Celebrities, with earnings of $82 million. In addition to this commercial success, Winfrey received numerous awards acknowledging her achievements in broadcasting and business, and for her humanitarian efforts. Along with The Oprah Winfrey Show, she has won more than forty Daytime Emmy Awards, including seven for best talk show host and nine for best talk show. After receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1998, she asked not to be considered for future Emmys, and show producers requested the same in 2000. Winfrey was named one of Time magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the twentieth century in 1998 and one of its one hundred most influential people in the world each year from 2004 to 2011 and in 2018. The year 2022 marked the tenth time that she was included on that list. She received a Global Humanitarian Action Award from the United Nations Association of the United States of America in 2004 and a Humanitarian Award from the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Even as she climbed the ladder of success, she remained accessible to the public and is one of the most famous and likable people in the world.

Bibliography

Adalian, Josef. "Aha! Oprah's Year." New York 23 Sept. 2013: 48–52.

Flanagan, Caitlin. "The Glory of Oprah." Atlantic Monthly Dec. 2011: 106–18.

Garson, Helen S. Oprah Winfrey: A Biography. 2nd ed. Westport: Greenwood, 2011. Digital file.

Green, Tara T. Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her Films, and African American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Digital file.

Harris, Jennifer, and Elwood Watson, eds. The Oprah Phenomenon. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2007.

Hurwitz, Cassie. "Oprah Is Named One of Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2022." Yahoo!Life, 23 May 2022, www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/oprah-named-one-time-100-213100523.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Illouz, Ella. Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.

O'Connor, Clare. "The Education of Oprah Winfrey: How She Saved Her South African School." Forbes 18 Sept. 2012.

"Oprah Winfrey." Academy of Achievement, 29 Sept. 2022, www.achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Paprocki, Sherry Beck. Oprah Winfrey: Talk Show Host and Media Magnate. New York: Chelsea, 2006.

Rayman, Noah. "Obama Awards Medal of Freedom to Clinton, Oprah." Time Nov. 2013: 1.

Rooney, Kathleen. Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2005.

Stelter, Brian. "Oprah Winfrey's Cable Channel Is Starting to Pay, Discovery Says." New York Times 31 July 2013: B5.

Szalai, Jennifer. "Oprah Winfrey, Book Critic." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 24Apr. 2013. Web. 15 Aug. 2014.