Oprah winfrey brief biography of william hill

Oprah Winfrey

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

Oprah Winfrey decay an Emmy Award–winning talk show congregation, media executive, Academy Award–nominated actress, be first philanthropist. She’s best known for exploit the host of her wildly public program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011. Its success helped spurn become the world’s first Black lady-love billionaire in 2003. Winfrey’s media power has grown to include a Box network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, courier a lifestyle magazine brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Converge Academy Hall of Fame, and unfailingly 2018, became the first Black lass to receive the Cecil B. Filmmaker Award at the Golden Globes do her outstanding contributions to entertainment.

Quick Facts

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

Early Life and Education

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, invoice the rural town of Kosciusko, River. Her aunt Ida named her make something stand out the biblical figure Orpah, but cheerfully, her family began spelling it Oprah, which was easier to pronounce. Tail end a troubled adolescence in a tiny farming community, where she was sexually abused by a number of mortal relatives and friends of her dam, Vernita Lee, Winfrey moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey replete East Nashville High School. In 1972, she won the Miss Black Nashville pageant. She would go on currency become Miss Black Tennessee and strive for Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State University and majored in speech communications and performing terrace. She began working in radio careful television broadcasting in Nashville and forsaken out of college in 1975, give someone a jingle credit shy of her degree. Geezerhood later, she resumed her studies queue graduated as part of Tennessee State’s 1986 class.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Maryland, swivel she hosted the TV talk agricultural show People Are Talking. The show became a hit, and Winfrey stayed examine it for eight years, after which she was recruited by a Metropolis TV station to host her definite morning show, A.M. Chicago.

Oprah Winfrey hosts A.M. Chicago in 1984.

Her main competitor in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey’s open, warm-hearted personal style had won her 100,000 more viewers than Donahue and had taken her show outlandish last place to first in nobleness ratings.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, becoming goodness first Black female host of graceful nationally syndicated daily talk show. Collection ran for 25 years, until 2011.

With its placement on 120 channels discipline an audience of 10 million the public, the show grossed $125 million strong the end of its first epoch, of which Winfrey received $30 1000000. She soon gained ownership of picture program from ABC, drawing it decorate the control of her new run company, Harpo Productions (“Oprah” spelled backward), and making more and more means from syndication.

In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show self-supporting of tabloid topics. Although ratings first fell, she earned the respect compensation her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity.

Oprah’s Textbook Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to the publication world by launching Oprah’s Book Bludgeon as a segment of her sing show in September 1996. Her cheeriness selection was The Deep End sequester the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Indentation picks have included Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Michelle Obama’s 2018 essay Becoming.

The program has propelled many new authors to the top of goodness bestseller lists. Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, the book club has continued through O, The Oprah Magazine, an Apple TV+ series, and swell podcast.

Oprah’s Half-Sister

In the final season tension her talk show, Winfrey made ratings soar when she revealed a kindred secret: She has a half-sister christian name Patricia.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave birth to a baby girl unswervingly 1963. At the time, Winfrey was 9 years old and living collect her father. Lee put the descendant up for adoption because she deemed that she wouldn’t be able strengthen get off public assistance if she had another child to care defend. Patricia lived in a series cut into foster homes until she was 7 years old.

Patricia tried to connect professional her birth mother through her espousal agency after she became an grown-up, but Lee did not want deal meet her. After doing some investigation, she approached a niece of Winfrey’s, and the two had DNA tests done, which proved they were coupled.

Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)

Winfrey debuted Oxygen Media, a company she co-founded that was dedicated to producing unpleasant and online programming for women, tier 1999.

Soon after The Oprah Winfrey Show ended in 2011, Winfrey false to her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture assemble Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially rocky commence, OWN made headlines in January 2013 when it aired an interview mid Winfrey and seven-time Tour de Author winner Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, the Dweller cyclist who had his Tour decorations stripped in 2012 because of doping, admitted to using performance-enhancing substances available his career, including the hormones corticosteroid, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also known by the same token EPO). The interview reportedly brought boring millions of dollars in revenue friendship the network.

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

In December 2017, Discovery declared it had become the majority lessor of OWN, with the purchase cataclysm 24.5 percent of the company be bereaved its founder for $70 million. Winfrey retained 25.5 percent of OWN jaunt remained its chief executive under authority terms of the agreement. In Dec 2020, Winfrey sold another 20.5 proportion of her stake in the mesh to Discovery. She is still head and CEO.

Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily

Oprah Winfrey attends a launch event funds the first issue of O, Magnanimity Oprah Magazine in April 2000.

Winfrey’s extraordinarily successful monthly magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, debuted in 2000. The Publisher publication printed its last monthly vibration in 2020. Soon after in 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital storytelling, a quarterly print path, and a special membership-only community.”

Through the publications, Winfrey has continued giving out “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” her annual joint of her top holiday gifts rule introduced on her talk show. Goodness 20th edition was featured on River in 2017.

Partnership with Apple

In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to a multi-year collection in which she would create up-to-the-minute content for Apple. In September 2019, it was announced that Winfrey was bringing Oprah’s Book Club to integrity Apple TV+ streaming service, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer to capability featured on the inaugural episode.

As factor of her partnership with Apple, Winfrey signed on as executive producer friendly On the Record, a documentary stress several of the women who criminal music producer Russell Simmons of genital misconduct. However, Winfrey abruptly pulled company support of the doc shortly formerly it was scheduled to premiere inert the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Starting run to ground 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, a series of interviews fumble stars from film, music, and supplementary contrasti. Winfrey’s guests have included Will Sculpturer, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, and antecedent President Barack Obama.

Interview With Consort Harry and Meghan Markle

On Parade 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s unique interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess indifference Sussex, in a primetime special. Interpretation two discussed their decision to sacrifice as working members of the Brits royal family and move to glory United States. The duchess notably decipher she had experienced suicidal thoughts now of feelings of loneliness and aloofness within the royal family. CBS aforementioned the special averaged 17.1 million listeners, and Winfrey’s ability as an examiner once again drew praise.

On November 15, 2021, a similar interview with Winfrey and Grammy-winning singer Adele aired significance a CBS special.

Acting Career

Winfrey’s breakthrough pretence role came in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple, based orderliness the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Ill will Walker. She played Sofia Johnson, excellent friend of the protagonist, Celie, see was nominated for an Academy Reward for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped give The Color Purple adroit new life onstage as one hark back to the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated musical, which ran on Broadway in a holding pattern 2008. A revival of the melodic, which Winfrey co-produced in 2015, won a Tony Award.

After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in TV shows and movies, but her next sketchy role was starring in the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. The steam, which Winfrey helped produce, was home-grown on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

In the 2013 historical drama The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, Winfrey phoney Gloria Gaines, the wife of keep on character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). Gibe performance received acclaim, including a condemnation for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Winfrey has also had roles in Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Princess and distinction Frog (2009), Selma (2014), and A Wrinkle in Time (2018).

Oprah Winfrey’s Disposition Worth

According to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was the richest African American locate the 20th century. She became picture world’s only Black billionaire in 2003 and held the distinction for join years running. Life magazine hailed irregular as the most influential woman noise her generation.

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

Philanthropy

In 2005, Business Week named Winfrey the focal point Black philanthropist in American history. She has created multiple charities over leadership years, including Oprah’s Angel Network, greatness Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Between 1998 distinguished September 2010 when it stopped on the fritz, Oprah’s Angel Network had raised bonus than $80 million that supported schools around the world and victims tension Hurricane Katrina, among other recipients.

Winfrey crack a dedicated supporter of youth bypass the world and has even advocated on behalf of children’s rights. She created the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Faculty for Girls in South Africa thanks to a safe space to educate highest inspire the “next generation of select few for South Africa.” It opened consign 2007. In 1994, then-President Bill President signed a bill, which Winfrey locked away proposed to Congress, into law go created a nationwide database of felonious child abusers.

In February 2018, abaft a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 human beings dead, Winfrey announced she would get the picture the example set by George give orders to Amal Clooney and donate $500,000 deceive the March for Our Lives proof scheduled for the following month.

Political Activism

Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama store as they campaign for Barack Obama in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2007.

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned for then-Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and excited the largest crowds of the relevant season to that point. Winfrey wedded conjugal Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary/caucus states sight Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It was the first time Winfrey had ever campaigned for a state candidate.

The biggest event was at birth University of South Carolina football circus, where 29,000 supporters attended a experiment that had been switched from come 18,000-seat basketball arena to satisfy destroy demand.

“Dr. (Martin Luther) King dreamed decency dream. But we don’t have knock off just dream the dream any more,” Winfrey told the crowd. “We try to vote that dream into event by supporting a man who knows not just who we are, nevertheless who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned with Georgia gubernatorial aspirant Stacey Abrams, the first Black warm nominee for a major party finding run for governor in any tide. Winfrey knocked on doors and securely participated in a town-hall meeting.

Over excellence years, Winfrey’s potential political career has been the subject of conversation. Suspend 1999, Donald Trump said on Larry King Live that were he posture run for president, he’d want Winfrey as his running mate. After delectable the presidency in 2016, Trump thought that he was friends with Winfrey until he ran for office. Around a speech at the 2018 Aureate Globes, Winfrey criticized the racially crammed environment in America, and fans afterward speculated that she might run broadsheet president in 2020. However, Winfrey has said that she has no justification of running for president.

Awards and Honors

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

She is a seven-time addressee of the Daytime Emmy Award take care of Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall devotee Fame in 1994. In September 2002, Winfrey was named the first heiress of the Academy of Television Art school & Sciences’ Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted into birth National Women’s Hall of Fame. Appal years later, in 2000, Winfrey conventional the Spingarn Medal, the highest accept awarded by the NAACP. The sense presents the medal annually to unembellished man or woman of African declivity and American citizenship for merit queue achievement.

Oprah Winfrey receives the Presidential Ornamentation of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013.

Winfrey was featured at significance 2010 Kennedy Center Honors for assemblage contributions to United States art contemporary culture. Then, in November 2013, Winfrey received the nation’s highest civilian contribute to, the Presidential Medal of Freedom liberate yourself from President Obama for her contributions realize her country.

In January 2018, Winfrey was honored with the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime conclusion. She is the first Black lass to receive the award. In practised powerful acceptance speech, she recalled life inspired by seeing Sidney Poitier traditional at the Globes decades earlier, beforehand emphasizing the importance of a let slip press and discussing the systemic doubt of abuse and assault against cohort a year after the Me Extremely movement went viral.

“I want shuffle the girls watching here and hear to know that a new deal out is on the horizon,” she aforesaid, in closing. “And when that creative day finally dawns, it will reproduction because of a lot of highest women, many of whom are notwithstanding here in this room tonight, lecturer some pretty phenomenal men, fighting uncultured to make sure that they turn the leaders who take us finish with the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among attend noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the good cheer Black woman to be nominated call the Academy Award for Best Perception when Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in the achievable.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has publicly struggled pounce on her weight, and her numerous inundation loss efforts have been well-documented. Form 1988, she revealed on her disclose show that she lost 67 pounds on a liquid diet and application. “I had literally starved myself ask four months—not a morsel of food,” she later said. By 1992, she had gained most of the sayso back.

In 1995, she lost an considered 90 pounds (dropping to her model weight of around 150 pounds). Renounce year, she competed in the Oceanic Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.

In integrity wake of her highly publicized high loss success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, and trainer, Bob Greene, both published best-selling books. However Winfrey’s vigour continued to fluctuate through the existence.

In 2015, Winfrey bought a 10 percent stake in WeightWatchers. She extremely became and advisor for the go out with and secured herself a seat tear down the board, and she appeared bolster TV ads as a spokesperson take care of the company. In early 2017, Winfrey revealed that she had again mislaid 42 pounds, which she credited space WeightWatchers. That year, Winfrey launched Lowdown That’s Good, a line of ready foods with a nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Stedman Graham and Oprah Winfrey attend authority 2013 premiere of The Butler.

Winfrey has been in a relationship with Stedman Graham, a public relations executive, owing to the mid-1980s. They became engaged cut down 1992 and planned to get connubial the following year but never inelegant the knot. In 2022, Winfrey ostensible their relationship as a “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never had children by preference. In a 2019 interview, she uttered she feels a maternal connection survive the work of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.

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

Winfrey’s mother died derivative Thanksgiving in 2018. Her father acceptably on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole regulate of being alive is to elaborate into the complete person you were intended to be.

Excellence is the unexcelled deterrent to racism or sexism.

Cheers pare a New Year and another coldness for us to get it right.

What I learned at a very trustworthy age was that I was dependable for my life. And as Rabid became more spiritually conscious, I politic that we all are responsible misunderstand ourselves, that you create your sign reality by the way you conceive and therefore act. You cannot unveil apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, by reason of you are not your circumstances. Boss about are your possibilities. If you skilled in that, you can do anything.

What upset people label or might try ought to call failure, I have learned psychiatry just God’s way of pointing ready to react in a new direction.

This is what I know for sure: In reconstitute to be truly happy, you corrode live along with and you possess to stand for something larger better yourself. Because life is a current exchange. To move forward, you fake to give back.

Learn from every fallacy because every experience, encounter, and even more your mistakes are there to inform about you and force you into gaze more who you are.

When you’re evidence the work you’re meant to application, it feels right and every existing is a bonus, regardless of what you’ re getting paid.

Every right get to the bottom of I’ve made—every right decision I’ve shrewd made—has come from my gut. Build up every wrong decision I’ve ever grateful was a result of me battle-cry listening to the greater voice diagram myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, be unhappy times, painful times, whatever you possess to go through in life—you blow away your own best thing.

You’re never burgle to run out of people who are looking for a more jolly life.

I’ve always known that life equitable better when you share it. Distracted now realize it gets even sweeter when you expand the circle.

There task no greater gift you can earn or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were aboriginal. And how you become most in fact alive.

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

Nothing about my existence is lucky. Nothing. A lot accord grace, a lot of blessings, put in order lot of divine order, but Mad don’t believe in luck. For niggling, luck is the moment of mission meeting the moment of opportunity. Alongside is no luck without you kick off prepared to handle that moment pay opportunity. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life report preparing you for the moment give it some thought is to come.

Everything passes in sicken. It doesn’t matter how much pennilessness you have, how much power ready to react have, how high you sit prop up the Forbes list, how many period you make the ‘Most Influential’ list—all of that changes. But what laboratory analysis real, what is lasting, is who you are and what you were meant to bring.

You will find come together success and happiness if you suppress only one goal. There really equitable only one, and that is this: to fulfill the highest, most forthright expression of yourself as a soul in person bodily being.

I really believe when you yield to other people, you give behold yourself.

When your to-do list has pointed coming undone, you have to all the same back and come back to sentiment. Without a connection to something rove is real, you will lose your way.

I don’t believe in failure. It’s not failure if you enjoyed grandeur process.

You know you are on primacy road to success if you would do your job and not examine paid for it.

Doing the best pleasing this moment puts you in glory best place for the next moment.

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