Oprah Winfrey, (born Jan. 29, 1954, Kosciusko, Miss., U.S.), U.S. television talk-show host and actress. After enduring an impoverished and troubled childhood, she became a news anchor for a local CBS television station in Tennessee at age 19. After graduating from Tennessee State University, she worked as a television reporter and anchor in Baltimore, Md., where she cohosted her first talk show (1977–83), and in 1984 she moved to Chicago to host A.M. Chicago, which became that city’s highest-rated morning show. Renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1985, it was syndicated the following year, making her the first African American woman to host a successful national daytime talk show. The enormously popular show was noted for its uplifting and therapeutic tone.
She has impacted nearly every aspect of the entertainment world while engaging, inspiring and enriching the lives of millions. Her achievements would be enough to fill more than a few great lives, but in fact this beloved producer, television host, actress, major player on Broadway and in Hollywood, author and self-made billionaire philanthropist is the stuff of greatness.
Oprah Gail Winfrey was born poor in rural Mississippi, to a soldier and an unwed teenage mother. Her childhood was tough by any standards, but the grandmother who raised her in a farm in Kosciusko taught the little girl to read at the age of three. Oprah recited po s and Bible verses in church, became known as the Little Speaker before she was sent away to Milwaukee. Her mother Vernita found work as a maid there, and while mother was away in their inner city apartment little Oprah was repeatedly abused, for years. She tried running away from that nightmare, was sent to a detention home only to be turned back when all the beds were full.
Alone and homeless at fourteen, she found her father Vernon in Nashville and found a home again. He gave Oprah the structure and home life she needed. “As strict as he was,” she says, “he had concerns about me making the best of my life and would not accept anything he thought was less than my best.”
She was smart and she was beautiful. At 17, she won a beauty contest in Nashville, an on-air job with an African American radio station, and a scholarship from Tennessee State University, where she majored in Speech Communications and Performing Arts. At 19, she became the first female African American news anchor in Nashville. She joined WJZ-TV News in Baltimore as co-anchor, where she also co-hosted her first talk show, People Are Talking.
Oprah knew how to listen. But, for all her success, few could have expected that when she moved to Chicago in 1984 to host Channel 7’s A.M. Chicago that she would redefine the talk show format and change television forever. The show was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the rest is history. Still, that history was far from finished. Even as America fell in love with this straightforward, unassuming lady, Steven Spielberg watched some tapes of her show sent by Quincy Jones, liked what he saw, and offered Oprah Winfrey the role of Sofia in his film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Her performance earned her nominations for both the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
SOURCE: Britannica : Kennedy Center
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