Whoopi Goldberg

• Date of birth: November 13, 1955
• Place of birth: New York, New York

Actor, comedian, and activist

Whoopi Goldberg is a highly decorated actor and comedian who has achieved the rare feat of winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. She has used her celebrity to endorse various political and social causes, including abortion rights and AIDS awareness, and performed in the Comic Relief series, which supported agencies fighting homelessness.

Early Life

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City to Emma and Robert Johnson. Shortly after her birth, Goldberg’s father left the family’s home in the Chelsea section of New York City. During Goldberg’s childhood, her mother began working as a Head Start teacher at the Hudson Guild, a neighborhood community center where her daughter began participating in acting workshops and theatrical productions through her teen years. Throughout her education, Goldberg struggled academically; she dropped out of high school shortly after beginning her freshman year. Later in life, she received a diagnosis of dyslexia, a learning disability that had been the cause of her difficulty in school.

Goldberg has spoken openly about her encounters with sex and drugs as a teenager during the late 1960s. At the age of seventeen, she entered a drug rehabilitation facility in Manhattan after a number of friends died of overdoses or debilitating drug abuse. Goldberg used these harsh personal experiences as source material for the characters in her first notable professional success in the early 1980s, a solo show titled The Spook Show.

In 1974, Goldberg made an impromptu move to California with a friend and her young daughter from a brief marriage. Through the early 1980s, Goldberg lived in San Diego and San Francisco and honed her acting skills in local theater productions while taking on odd jobs.

Life’s Work

As Goldberg rose in prominence in the local theater scenes of San Diego, San Francisco, and Berkeley, California, during the mid- to late 1970s, she toyed with changing her name. Soon, she adopted the name Whoopi, which soon morphed into Whoopi Cushion. At this point, her mother suggested that she adopt a different surname in order to be taken seriously, and she went with Goldberg.

By 1982, Goldberg had generated enough local interest in her work to create a solo show. In a series of monologues, Goldberg shifted characters and voices to bring to life a wide range of characters, from a teenage “Valley Girl” who has performed her own abortion to a PhD recovering from drug addiction. Goldberg used the show, later titled The Whoopi Goldberg Show, as an opportunity to address an array of social issues.

After coming to the attention of several East Coast producers, Goldberg’s show made its Broadway debut in 1984 at the Lyceum Theater. Soon, she was booked to appear on cable comedy shows and children’s programs, such as Reading Rainbow. In 1985, she was cast as the lead character, Celie, in director Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. After the success of The Color Purple, Goldberg’s film and television career took off, and she won roles in a number of commercially successful comedies. Although her attempts at television sitcoms failed to garner positive reviews, Goldberg used her celebrity to raise awareness for the growing homelessness problem in the United States through her work with the benefit series Comic Relief.

After a series of underperforming films and well-received appearances on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Goldberg was cast as a psychic in the 1990 film Ghost. The role earned Goldberg an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also hosted the Academy Awards in 1994, 1996, 1999, and 2002. She joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' board of governors in 2020.

In the 1990s, Goldberg did voice work for the films The Lion King (1994) and The Pagemaster (1994). From 1998 until 2002, she was a coproducer of the television game show Hollywood Squares. She starred in the 1992 comedy Sister Act, and then held supporting roles in a number of films, including Girl, Interrupted (1999), Rat Race (2001), Racing Stripes (2005), Toy Story 3 (2010), The Muppets (2011), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). In September 2007, Goldberg became the moderator of daytime talk show The View, and in 2009 won the award for Outstanding Talk Show Host at the Daytime Emmys for her contributions to the show. As a member of The View, Goldberg developed a reputation for speaking her mind, which often resulted in controversy. For instance, in 2022, Goldberg was suspended from the show after disagreeing with the idea that the Holocaust was about white supremacy and antisemitism. In addition to her tenure on The View, Goldberg's career comprises nearly two hundred film and television roles, and she also has been active as a producer of dozens of television shows, television movies, documentaries, and Broadway stage productions.

In addition to her performance work, Goldberg has published several books and been a UNICEF goodwill ambassador since 2003, bringing awareness about HIV/AIDS orphans and fundraising for causes such as COVID-19 relief.

Significance

Goldberg became a household name by fusing social advocacy with entertainment. Her activism on issues such as abortion rights, homelessness, and AIDS awareness made her a rare Hollywood celebrity whose cultural impact transcends her onscreen performances. However, Goldberg’s acting career also is notable for her adeptness at both comedy and drama, and her willingness to play unconventional roles. Her 1990 Oscar for Ghost marked the fifth time a Black actor and the second time an African American woman had won an Academy Award, after Hattie McDaniel in 1939. Fewer than two dozen performers have achieved EGOT status, having won competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards, and Goldberg is among them. In addition to winning those and other major awards in her industry, Goldberg was inducted into Academy of Achievement in 1994 and received the 2001 Mark Twain Award for American Humor.

Bibliography

Cox, Ana Marie. "Whoopi Goldberg Wants to Make You Feel Better." The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/whoopi-goldberg-wants-to-make-you-feel-better.html. Accessed 22 Mar. 2017.

Goldberg, Whoopi. If Someone Says "You Complete Me," Run!: Whoopi's Big Book of Relationships. Hachette Books, 2015.

Gross, Jenny, and Neil Vigdor. "ABC Suspends Whoopi Goldberg Over Holocaust Comments." The New York Times, 1 Feb. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/whoopi-goldberg-holocaust.html. Accessed 8 Mar. 2022.

Haggins, Bambi L. “Crossover Diva: Whoopi Goldberg and Persona Politics.” The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, edited by Daniel Bernardi. Routledge, 2008.

Jackson, Angelique. “Whoopi Goldberg Talks Her Career 30 Years after ‘Ghost’ Oscar Win.” Variety, 21 Apr. 2021, variety.com/2021/film/news/whoopi-goldberg-egot-ghost-oscar-1234955841. Accessed 21 July 2021.‌

Kord, Susanne, and Elisabeth Krimmer. “Hidden Alternatives: Judi Dench, Kathy Bates, Parker Posey, Whoopi Goldberg, and Frances McDormand.” Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens, and TV Heroines: Contemporary Screen Images of Women. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Parish, James Robert. Whoopi Goldberg: Her Journey from Poverty to Megastardom. Birch Lane Press, 1997.