Oprah Gail Winfrey - Biography, Height, Weight, Age, Boyfriend, Husband, Family, Life Story & More
Full Name Oprah Gail Winfrey
Nickname Lady O
Birth date January 29, 1954
Age 69 (As 2023)
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Height 5'
6.5"
Relationship
Status Engaged
Net Worth $2.6 billion
Oprah Winfrey is an American television personality,
actress, and businesswoman who was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January
29, 1954. Her syndicated daily talk program was among the most well-known in
its field. She rose to become one of the richest and most powerful women in the
country.
At the age of six, Winfrey relocated to Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, to live with her mother. She was moved to live with her father in
Nashville when she was in her early teens, and he turned out to be a helpful
figure in her life. Winfrey was given a full scholarship to Tennessee State
University, but she dropped out to focus on her broadcasting profession. She
eventually acquired her degree in 1986. At the age of 19, she started working
as a news anchor for the neighborhood CBS television station. In 1976, she was
promoted to coanchor and reporter for the ABC news network's Baltimore,
Maryland affiliate. She felt confined by the neutrality demanded of news
reporting and joined People Are Talking in Baltimore as a cohost in 1977.
Since Winfrey was a master of the informal and
intimate talk-show format, she relocated to Chicago in 1984 to host the failing
talk show AM Chicago. The program became a success thanks to Winfrey's openness
and engaging personality, and in 1985 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The show was nationally syndicated in 1986 and went on to become the
highest-rated talk show on American television, winning multiple Emmys in the
process.
In Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice
Walker's 1982 book The Color Purple, Winfrey made an appearance. She landed
more roles as a result of her critically acclaimed performance, including one
in the 1989 television miniseries The Women of Brewster Place. In 1986, Winfrey
established her own television production firm, Harpo Productions, Inc., and in
1990, she established Harpo Films. The firms started purchasing the film rights
to literary titles, such as Toni Morrison's Beloved and Connie May Fowler's
Before Women Had Wings, both of which starred Winfrey and had her on board as
producer and actress, respectively.
After that, Winfrey voiced characters in a number of
animated movies, such as Charlotte's Web (2006) and The Princess and the Frog
(2009), and she also made an appearance in Lee Daniels' 2013 film The Butler.
Winfrey produced and starred in the Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma
(2014), which received an Academy Award nomination for best picture. She later
played the daughter of a woman whose malignant cells were used in research that
resulted in significant scientific advancements, unbeknownst to her and her
family, in the HBO TV film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017). Then,
Winfrey played Mrs. Which in the 2018 motion picture version of Madeleine
L'Engle's renowned 1962 science fiction book A Wrinkle in Time.
In 1996, Winfrey pioneered the on-air book club
movement. She revealed the choices two to four weeks in advance and then had a
small number of people listen in while she reviewed the book on her show. Each
selection soon shot to the top of the bestseller lists, and Winfrey had a huge
impact on the publishing sector. With the hugely successful launches of O, the
Oprah Magazine in 2000 and O at Home in 2004, Winfrey further increased her
footprint in the publishing sector. The latter went out of business in 2008,
while O, the Oprah Magazine stopped printing in 2020. The following year, it
underwent a rebranding. Oprah Daily was established as a digital offering, and
O Quarterly, a four-times-yearly print version, was introduced.
When Winfrey cofounded Oxygen Media, which established
a cable television network for women, in 1998, she enlarged her media
entertainment empire. The Oprah & Friends channel made its satellite radio
debut in 2006. In 2008, she arranged a collaboration with Discovery
Communications, and in January 2011, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) took over
for the Discovery Health Channel. It was rumored that Winfrey would concentrate
on OWN after announcing in 2009 that her television chat show would stop in
2011. The Oprah Winfrey Show concluded airing in May 2011, and Oprah's Next
Chapter, a weekly prime-time interview series on OWN, premiered in January
2012. While
Winfrey will continue to be connected with the channel, it was reported in 2017
that Discovery would buy a majority stake in OWN. She also started working as a
special correspondent for CBS's news program 60 Minutes that year. Winfrey
revealed in 2018 that she had reached a deal to create content for Apple TV+,
and in 2020 she started creating and hosting the online discussion program
Oprah Talks COVID-19. Additionally, she moderated a two-part
panel discussion titled "Where Do We Go From Here?" on OWN to debate
the growing anti-racism movement that was sparked by the Minneapolis, Minnesota
police shooting death of unarmed African American man George Floyd. Prince
Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, were the subjects of Oprah's first interview
with them after they ceased serving as professional members of the British
royal family in 2021. On CBS, the much anticipated TV special aired.
Winfrey took part in a variety of charity endeavors,
such as founding the global nonprofit organization Oprah's Angel Network. She
inaugurated a $40 million South African school for underprivileged girls in
2007. She became a vocal opponent of child abuse and won numerous accolades and
honors from civic, charitable, and entertainment organizations. She was honored
by the Kennedy Center in 2010, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences gave her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award the following year.
Winfrey
received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. Her passionate speech, in
which she advocated for racial and gender equality, won her the Cecil B.
DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement) in 2018, and it was
hailed as one of the event's most memorable moments.
The Path Made Clear: Finding Your Life's Direction and
Purpose (2019) and What Happened to You? : Conversations on Trauma, Resilience,
and Healing (co-authored with Bruce D. Perry) are just two of the self-help
books written by Winfrey.
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