Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is a multi-talented American media mogul, talk show host, actor, producer, and novelist. She was born Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954. She became famous for her Chicago-based talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired nationally in syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Famously known as the "Queen of All Media," she was the only Black billionaire in the world for a while and the wealthiest African-American of the twentieth century. Many considered her to be the most powerful woman in the world by 2007.

Although she spent her childhood in inner-city Milwaukee, Winfrey's mother was a teen, and she was born into poverty in rural Mississippi. According to her, she was a victim of childhood and adolescent molestation; she became pregnant at the age of fourteen; her son was delivered prematurely and passed away while still a baby. After that, Winfrey moved home with Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, whom she refers to as her father. While still a high school student, Winfrey got a job in radio. She joined the nightly news team as a co-anchor at the age of 19. After taking a third-rated Chicago talk show to the top spot and starting her own production business, Winfrey made the jump to daytime talk shows, where her sometimes passionate and impromptu speeches found an audience.

After Phil Donahue created the tabloid talk show genre, Winfrey popularized and reinvented it, credited with developing a more personal, confessional style of media communication. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey rethought her program to center on spirituality, mindfulness, self-help, and literature. Some have applauded her for becoming a benefactor despite the criticisms she has received for launching a confession culture, advocating controversial self-help theories, and focusing on emotions. It is believed that Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries was worth around one million votes, solidifying her position as a political powerhouse in the 2008 presidential election. It was also the year that she established OWN, her very own television network. President Obama presented Winfrey with the Medal of Freedom in 2013.

There was an induction ceremony for her into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. At the Marine Corps Marathon in October, she completed in under four and a half hours. Several universities have bestowed honorary doctorate degrees upon her. With 19 Daytime Emmys under her belt (including the Chairman's and Lifetime Achievement Awards), 2 Primetime Emmys under her belt (including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award), a Tony, a Peabody, and the Academy Awards' Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to name a few, Winfrey has been a prolific award winner throughout her career. It was in 2021 when Winfrey became a member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Life in the beginning

Born Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954, her birth certificate initially listed her first name as Orpah, after a biblical character from the Book of Ruth. However, due to frequent mispronunciation, the moniker "Oprah" remained. Her parents, Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee, were married while she was a teenager, and she was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi. They were never wed, Winfrey's parents. Housekeeper Vernita Lee (1935-2018) went under several names. She was born to Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022), who worked as a coal miner, barber, and city councilman. He was a veteran when she was born. In 2006, her genetic genealogy revealed that her mother's side of the family was from the Kpelle people, who lived in what is now Liberia. The results showed that she is 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% "Native American" (Indigenous peoples of the Americas), and 3% East Asian.

Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963) was Winfrey's maternal grandmother. She lived in rural poverty for the first six years of her life after her birth when her mother migrated north. Because her grandmother was so low-income, Winfrey's classmates would tease her whenever she donned gowns constructed from potato bags. She began attending the local church with her grandmother, who helped her learn to read when she was three years old. There, she earned the moniker "The Preacher" due to her impressive memorization skills. The rumors of Winfrey's grandmother's abuse when she was a kid are true.

Due to her long hours as a maid, Winfrey's mother was less encouraging and supportive than her grandmother when the family relocated to an inner-city area in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when Winfrey was six years old. Lee had another daughter about this time; Patricia, Winfrey's younger half-sister, passed away in February 2003 at the age of 43 from complications connected to her cocaine addiction. Vernon temporarily sent Winfrey to live with him in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1962 because Lee was having trouble parenting both girls. Although Lee had a third daughter while Winfrey was in Nashville, they decided to put her up for adoption so that she wouldn't have to rely on welfare. The child would go on to be called Patricia. Up until 2010, Winfrey had no idea she had a second half-sister. Jeffrey, Winfrey's half-brother, was born to Lee at the same time that Winfrey returned to live with her mother; he tragically passed away in 1989 from complications associated to AIDS. The Baptist church baptized her when she was eight years old.

Winfrey initially revealed the sexual assault that began when she was nine years old on an episode of her TV program in 1986. She went on to say that her cousin, uncle, and a family friend abused her. A biographer said that Winfrey's family did not accept her story when she told them about the assault when she was 24 years old. Winfrey previously said that her lack of maternal figures in her own upbringing was the reason she had decided against having children of her own. Winfrey ran away from home when she was 13 years old, after enduring years of violence, according to her. Her kid was born prematurely and passed away soon after birth; she became pregnant at the age of 14. At a later date, Winfrey expressed her feelings of betrayal against the relative who had sold her son's tale to the National Enquirer in 1990.

Winfrey moved from Milwaukee's Lincoln Middle and High School to the wealthy suburb of Nicolet High School after achieving early success in the Upward Bound program. She recounted how, after transferring, riding the bus to school alongside other African-Americans—including those who were servants to classmates' families—constantly brought her poverty into sharp focus. She started to rebel and steal from her mom so she could spend like her friends. This time around, her mother did not bring her back when she sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville. Her education was Vernon's first goal, and he was both firm and supportive. At East Nashville High School, which Winfrey attended, she joined the speech team and eventually placed second in the country for dramatic interpretation. She was also named Most Popular Girl and became an honors student. In the year 1986, she claimed, "'When my father took me, it changed the course of my life. He saved me. He simply knew what he wanted and expected. He would take nothing less'" .

As a teenager, Winfrey got her start in the workforce at a neighborhood supermarket. Crowned Miss Black Tennessee, Winfrey was seventeen years old when she achieved this feat. Additionally, she caught the ear of WVOL, a local black radio station, which eventually employed her for part-time news broadcasting. When she was a senior in high school and for the first two years of college, she worked there. She attended Tennessee State University—a historically Black college—to study communication on a full scholarship after winning an oratory contest. But she was already a famous TV host by the time she turned in her capstone project and received her diploma in 1987.

According to Winfrey's grandma, who said that her granddaughter was performing on stage from the time she could talk, Winfrey's media career was inevitable. When she was little, she would pretend to be an interviewer for her corncob doll and the birds that lived outside her family's fence. Hattie Mae "gave me a positive sense of myself" and pushed Winfrey to speak in public, something Winfrey subsequently recognized as being due to her grandmother.

There is television.

Locally, Winfrey was WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV) news anchor in Nashville, where she frequently covered the same subjects as her rival, John Tesh. She was also the first Black female news anchor and the youngest news anchor in the city. She changed stations in 1976 to co-host the 6 o'clock news on WJZ-TV in Baltimore. After losing her position as co-anchor in 1977, she took a less prominent role at the station. After that, on August 14, 1978, she debuted as co-host alongside Richard Sher on WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking. Additionally, she was the host of Dialing for Dollars in her hometown.

Dennis Swanson, the general manager of WLS-TV in Chicago, hired Winfrey in 1984 to host AM Chicago, a half-hour morning chat program that had dismal ratings. Winfrey moved to Chicago for the job. January 2, 1984 was the airdate of the premiere. Just a few short months after Winfrey became host, the show's ratings skyrocketed, and it eventually surpassed Donahue as Chicago's most popular talk show. Roger Ebert, a film critic, convinced her to join King World's syndication contract. She would bring in forty times as much money as Ebert's TV show, At the Movies, according to his prediction. Following its rebranding as The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program went from half an hour to an hour. September 8, 1986 was the day of the first episode's nationwide airing. Winfrey's syndicated show overtook Donahue as America's most popular daytime talk show, drawing in twice as many viewers as Donahue. A lot of eyes were on their highly hyped match. August 1988's Time magazine reported:

Oprah Winfrey's meteoric climb to the top of the talk show ratings was a surprise to most. She is a large black woman competing against mostly white men. Compared to, instance, Phil Donahue, she is a very inferior interviewer. Her straightforward inquiry, powerful humor, and, most importantly, empathy more than compensate for her lack of journalistic roughness. Oprah is known to shed a tear or two when guests share heartbreaking experiences... As a result, they frequently find themselves disclosing information that they would normally keep under wraps, especially in front of a national television audience. The discussion show functions similarly to a therapy group.

According to TV columnist Howard Rosenberg: "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, low-down, earthy, and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular." Les Payne of Newsday said, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world." Martha Bayles of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots."

When The Oprah Winfrey Show first began airing, it was considered a tabloid talk show. Winfrey expanded her program themes in the mid-1990s to include meditation, spirituality, geopolitics, heart illness, and other wide subjects. She also organized televised giveaways and interviewed famous people about social topics including substance addiction, cancer, and charitable work. Claims that Winfrey was endorsing pseudoscience in the show's final years became more common. As a result, Winfrey has come under fire for giving airtime to certain guests whose medical opinions, whether on her program or elsewhere, are often unsubstantiated by evidence. Dr. Phil, Jenny McCarthy's vaccination claims that lack evidence, and Suzanne Somers's bioidenticals marketing are common targets of this criticism. Dr. Oz promotes a number of "miracle pills" that seek to aid in weight reduction. Even after her program stopped, several media urged Oprah to condemn the medical claims made by her former protégés. For instance, in 2020, in response to Dr. Oz's remarks on the coronavirus and his advocacy of a lackluster medication as a treatment, there were demands for her to criticize him.

Along with her talk show, Winfrey has a number of acting credits, including the 1989 drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place and the 1989 spin-off, Brewster Place. Besides her work as a TV presenter and guest, Winfrey also helped launch Oxygen, a cable network for women. From 2002 to 2006, her show Oprah After the Show ran on Oxygen until Winfrey sold her shares and moved it to Oprah.com. Among her various roles, she oversees film and television productions at Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards), the studio that is responsible for hit shows including Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, The Dr. Oz Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Between 1992 and 1994, she presided over three ABC Afterschool Specials.

Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced on January 15, 2008, that they will be rebranding Discovery Health Channel as OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. After a postponement in 2009, it finally lifted off on January 1, 2011.

May 25, 2011, was the airdate of The Oprah Winfrey Show's series finale.

Winfrey made her announcement to CBS in January 2017 that she will be joining the Sunday night news magazine show 60 Minutes as a special contributor beginning in September 2017. An exhibition focusing on Winfrey's impact on African American culture via television debuted in 2018 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. With 2018 coming to a close, Winfrey departed 60 Minutes.

Winfrey and Apple announced their multi-year entertainment relationship in June 2018. As part of the deal, Winfrey promised to produce original content for Apple TV+, the tech company's streaming service. On November 1, 2019, Oprah's Book Club, the first program to air as part of the agreement, made its debut. The Oprah Winfrey Show section of the same name served as the inspiration for Oprah's Book Club. During the COVID-19 epidemic, March 21, 2020, was the launch of Oprah Talks COVID-19, the second show under the pact. Winfrey "[continues] to explore impactful and relevant topics with fascinating thought leaders from all over the world" in her third show, The Oprah Conversation, which premiered on July 30, 2020.

Interviews with famous people

"Michael Jackson Talks..." was a rare prime-time interview that Winfrey presented in 1993. the most-watched interview ever, with 36.5 million viewers, and the fourth-most-watched event in American television history, which was Michael Jackson's appearance on Oprah. Winfrey made her first appearance on David Letterman's Late Show with the Late Show on December 1, 2005, after a sixteen-year absence, to promote her new Broadway musical, The Color Purple. Some called it the "television event of the decade" and Letterman drew 13.45 million people, his biggest audience in almost 11 years. Despite rumors that a long-simmering hatred was at the root of the split, Winfrey and Letterman both rejected the notion. "I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you thought was happening," she added. During the taping of the season premiere of The Oprah Winfrey Show in New York City on September 10, 2007, Letterman made his television debut.

Rappers Ice Cube, Ludacris, and 50 Cent all took issue with Winfrey in 2006, claiming that she had an anti-hip hop prejudice. According to Ludacris's interview with GQ magazine, Winfrey criticized his songs and altered his remarks when he appeared on her show with the Crash group. According to him, he was also not invited to the show from the beginning like the other cast members. Although Winfrey disagrees with rap songs that "marginalize women," she does love listening to Kanye West and other singers, including those who have performed on her show. She went on to say that she had a conversation with Ludacris behind the scenes following his performance to clarify her stance and that she respected his music's intended entertainment value but acknowledged that certain fans may take it too seriously. Winfrey was the target of criticism in September 2008 when the Drudge Report's Matt Drudge claimed that Winfrey had turned down Sarah Palin's invitation to appear on her show, citing Winfrey's apparent support for Barack Obama as the reason. There was never any talk of Palin making an appearance on Winfrey's show, she said, denying the claim. She stated that she would not allow any of the candidates to use her show as a platform once she publicly supported Obama. Twice Obama did go on her show, but it was before he announced he was running for president. Before the 2009 election, Winfrey said that Palin would be a great guest on her program and that she hoped to have her back on November 18th.

In 2009, Winfrey faced backlash for hosting actress Suzanne Somers on her show, where the two discussed hormone therapies that are contrary to conventional medical wisdom. Those who think Winfrey is too soft on politicians and famous visitors she seems to enjoy have also voiced their disapproval. "Oprah doesn't do follow-up questions unless you're an author who's embarrassed her by fabricating portions of a supposed memoir she's plugged for her book club," complained Lisa de Moraes of The Washington Post, referring to the scandal surrounding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Her 2021 interview with Prince Harry, Duchess of Sussex, and Meghan Markle garnered widespread media coverage across the world.

The 2024 ABC television special "AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special" was announced in the same year. Set to premiere on September 12, the hour-long program will investigate how AI affects people's everyday lives. It will include conversations with notable IT sector personalities including Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Other forms of media

Motion picture

Winfrey played the role of a devastated housewife named Sofia in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film The Color Purple. For her role, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. With Winfrey on board as producer, the Broadway musical based on Alice Walker's novel premiered in the latter half of 2005. Adapted from Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved, Winfrey produced and starred in the 1998 film adaptation. Playing the character of Sethe, the protagonist and a former slave, required Winfrey to undergo a 24-hour simulation of slavery. This included being bound, blindfolded, and abandoned in the woods while she prepared. In spite of heavy promotion—including two segments of her talk show devoted entirely to the film—and mixed reviews, Beloved bombed at the box office, taking in under $30 million. During the promotional materials for the film, Thandie Newton, Winfrey's co-star, characterized her as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade." In 2005, Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Their Eyes Were Watching God, author Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel. The teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks served as the basis for the made-for-television picture, which had Halle Berry as the principal female actor.

Harpo Films, Winfrey's production firm, inked an exclusive output deal with HBO in late 2008 to create and produce original scripted series, documentaries, and feature films.

Winfrey made her cinematic debut in Lee Daniels' 2013 feature The Butler. Despite the high praise for her performance, she did not receive an Oscar nomination.

In 2006's Charlotte's Web, Oprah provided the voice of Gussie the goose. In 2007,'s Bee Movie, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger, Oprah provided the voice of Judge Bumbleton. During 2009, Winfrey voiced the role of Princess Tiana's mother, Eudora, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog. In 2010, she narrated the American version of the BBC nature show Life for Discovery.

The 2018 film version of A Wrinkle in Time, based on the novel by Madeleine L'Engle, featured Winfrey as Mrs. Which. Crow: The Legend, an animated VR short film narrated by John Legend and produced and written by Eric Darnell, tells the story of the Native American people's origins and features her voiceover.

Putting pen to paper and publishing

Winfrey has written or co-written five books. In 2005, when she and her personal trainer Bob Greene announced a weight-loss book, rumor had it that their hidden advance money had surpassed that of the memoirs of former U.S. Clinton administration.

While she was on tour in 2015 for a book of the same name, she announced her memoir, The Life You Want, in 2016. Publication was "indefinitely postponed" from 2017 to 2016.

Among Winfrey's publications are O, The Oprah Magazine, and O At Home, which she ran from 2004 to 2008. O, The Oprah Magazine was named the most successful startup in the industry's history by Fortune in 2002. January 2009's issue was the best-selling since 2006, despite a 2.4 million-copy drop in circulation between 2005 and 2008. Since 2006, the best-selling issue was the one in January 2009. The typical reader of her magazine has a salary that is far higher than the median for women in the United States, making her magazine readership much more affluent than her TV program audience. O Magazine's regular print editions will cease with the December 2020 issue, as stated in July 2020. It was the "final monthly print edition" of the magazine, and Winfrey thanked subscribers and recognized the fact in the December 2020 issue.

* On the web*

In order to support Winfrey's television programs, publications, book club, and public charity, her production firm built the Oprah.com website. More than six million people visit Oprah.com every month, and the site receives about 20,000 emails weekly. On average, it receives 70 million page views. Through her program and website, Winfrey launched "Oprah's Child Predator Watch List" to assist in the search for those suspected of child molesting. It just took 48 hours to apprehend two of the highlighted individuals.

What is radio?

The news broke on February 9, 2006, that Winfrey had inked a $55 million, three-year deal with XM Satellite Radio to launch her own radio station. Popular guests on Oprah Radio include Marianne Williamson, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Nate Berkus, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. On September 25, 2006, at 11:00 am Eastern Time, Oprah & Friends moved into a new studio at Winfrey's Chicago offices and began airing. You may listen to the station on XM Radio Channel 156 at any time day or night. According to her contract, Winfrey must be on broadcast for 30 minutes every week, 39 weeks of the year.

="life outside of work"

The housing market

Throughout her life and career, Oprah's vast and ever-changing realty portfolio has been the center of increased scrutiny. Numerous influential industry publications have referred to her as a "tycoon" because of her assets, which are worth an estimated $127 million as of 2022.

at 1985, when her talk show was just starting off, Oprah bought a unit at Water Tower Place in Chicago. In 1992, 1993, and 1994, she bought the condominiums directly below it, as well as the ones next to it and next to it. As a weekend retreat, she bought a 164-acre property in Rolling Prairie, Indiana in 1988 that included a main house, guest house, orchard, and stables. Around the end of the year 2000, she sold the 80-acre Telluride, Colorado compound that she had bought in 1992. A Chicago penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel was also hers to buy in 1994. She bought five condominiums in various Fisher Island, Florida development sites between 1996 and 2000. Oprah bought a Greenwich, Connecticut mansion for her friend Gayle King in 2000 via her Chicago-based LLC Overground Railroad. While living in Montecito, California, Oprah bought a 42-acre (17 hectare) estate with beach and mountain views in 2001 after selling all five of her condominiums on Fisher Island. She has since referred to it as her "main home base" and has lived there till 2022.

She also bought houses in Elmwood Park, Illinois, and Merrillville, Indiana, that year for other people in her family and circle of acquaintances. Similarly, in 2002 she bought a lakeside apartment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and her dad's house in Franklin, Tennessee. She put her Indiana compound up for sale in 2003 and finally sold it in 2004. Oprah bought a condominium in Atlanta, Georgia, and a number of properties in Hawaii (Kula and Hana) totaling 163 acres between 2003 and 2005. She bought a house in Douglasville, Georgia in 2005 and gave it to a relative in 2011.

Oprah allegedly bought a co-op apartment on Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago in 2006 with the intention of permanently relocating there from her previous adjoined-condo unit in Water Tower Place for the run of her show. However, for reasons nobody knows, the property sat empty until 2012, when she sold it. She liquidated her Atlanta penthouse in 2008. She bought a penthouse in midtown Manhattan, New York City, the same year (via her second limited liability company, Sophie's Penthouse) and listed Gayle King's home as well; she sold the property in 2012.

She put her duplex in Chicago, which included two units, on the market at the beginning of 2014. Oprah returned to Telluride, Colorado later that year to buy a 60-acre parcel, intending to construct a home there. A retired nuclear physicist from the region sued her that year over trail access rights, but the judge eventually rejected the case due to a lack of case law and other reasons. She has not revealed the full scope of the deal that pertains to the development that will take place on the site.

Oprah added a 23-acre estate and a 44-acre devoted agriculture and equestrian preserve to her Montecito complex in 2015, after her purchase of more land in Telluride the same year. She also sold both of her houses in Chicago's downtown that year.

After selling her final Chicago area home from Elmwood Park, Oprah bought two adjacent parcels of land totaling 23 acres in 2018, which included the Madroneagle complex on Orcas Island, Washington. By purchasing a four-acre complex from actor Jeff Bridges, Oprah increased the size of her Montecito home-base compound to seventy contiguous acres in late 2019. She sold her Orcas Island compound in 2021, claiming she was too busy to use it, and bought a new one in Montecito, which was further away from her home-base compound. In 2022, she flipped the new one and split the properties, selling one to her longtime personal trainer and property manager Bob Greene and the other to actress Jennifer Aniston. Winfrey spent $6.6 million in 2023 to acquire 870 acres of property on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

The history of romanticism

Winfrey was a perfect student and maintained an air of quiet dignity during their youthful relationship, which Anthony Otey remembered fondly from when he hoarded hundreds of love messages. They discussed the possibility of marriage, but Otey insisted he had known in his heart that Winfrey would have a better life than he could provide her. In her final year of high school, on Valentine's Day, she dumped him.

At Tennessee State University, Winfrey met William "Bubba" Taylor in 1971, a few months after her breakup with Otey. George Mair, a CBS journalist, claims that Winfrey's "first intense, to-die-for love affair" was with Taylor. According to Mair, Winfrey "did everything to keep him, including literally begging him on her knees to stay with her" after she helped Taylor get a position at WVOL. When Winfrey relocated to Baltimore in June 1976 to take a job at WJZ-TV, Taylor was hesitant to follow. The two of us genuinely did care for one another, Winfrey reflected afterwards. "We shared a deep love. A love I will never forget."

A love affair between Winfrey and John Tesh occurred in the 1970s. The demands of their interracial romance allegedly caused Tesh to end his engagement with Winfrey, according to biographer Kitty Kelley.

Lloyd Kramer was Winfrey's rock when she was under fire from WJZ-TV management for being too emotional on live during tragedies and for being dissatisfied with her physical appearance (particularly after her hair came out due to a poor perm). According to Winfrey, Lloyd was absolutely exceptional. "That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through the whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun romance I ever had."

When Kramer relocated to New York to work for NBC, Winfrey allegedly had an affair with a married man who had no plans to leave his wife, according to Mair. Winfrey would subsequently say: "I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless without him. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end, I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and pleading with him" . In a suicide letter she sent to her best friend Gayle King on September 8, 1981, Winfrey asked King to water her plants since she had grown so despondent. What Winfrey told Ms. magazine was that the suicide letter was greatly exaggerated. "I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I did it, something really good would happen and I'd miss it."

Winfrey says that her emotional turmoil eventually resulted in a problem with weight: "The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much. So I'd end up with these cruel self-absorbed guys who'd tell me how selfish I was, and I'd say 'Oh thank you, you're so right' and be grateful to them. Because I had no sense that I deserved anything else. Which is also why I gained so much weight later on. It was the perfect way of cushioning myself against the world's disapproval."

Afterwards, Winfrey said that she and a man she was seeing at the time used crack cocaine. She said on her television program: "I always felt that the drug itself is not the problem but that I was addicted to the man." She further stated: "I can't think of anything I wouldn't have done for that man."

Rumor has it that Winfrey had a second affair with drugs. They allegedly used drugs and lived together for a few months in 1985, according to Randolph Cook, who claims to be their ex-boyfriend. For what Cook said was the banning of a tell-all book detailing their purported connection, he attempted to sue Winfrey for $20 million in 1997.

Winfrey had a short romance with film critic Roger Ebert in the mid-1980s; she says Ebert advised her to put her program into syndication.

Haitian director Reginald Chevalier asserts that he started a relationship with Winfrey in 1985, taking romantic nights at home, candlelight baths, and dinners with Michael Jordan and Danny Glover. This was before Winfrey's Chicago talk show became nationally famous. According to Chevalier, Winfrey broke up the relationship after meeting Stedman Graham.

Stedman Graham has been Winfrey's partner since 1986. They had planned to tie the knot in November 1992, but the big day never came.

Gayle King has been Winfrey's closest friend since they were both in their twenties. King is now an editor at Oprah Magazine and was presenter of The Gayle King Show before that. Speculation about Winfrey and King's sexual orientation has persisted since 1997, when she portrayed a therapist on an episode of the show Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out as homosexual. To paraphrase Winfrey, "I understand why people think we're gay" is what she says in O magazine back in August 2006. "There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual?" "I've told nearly everything there is to tell. All my stuff is out there. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please."

After meeting in Baltimore, Winfrey and Maria Shriver have maintained a long-term connection. Maya Angelou was someone Winfrey looked up to and considered a friend and mentor; the author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was a "mother-sister-friend" to Winfrey. After throwing Angelou "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida in 2008, Winfrey escorted her and 150 guests on a weeklong Caribbean cruise in 1998 to celebrate Angelou's 70th birthday.

Wealth under one's own name

Winfrey became a billionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show came to national syndication, despite being born into rural poverty and reared by a mother who relied on government welfare payments in a disadvantaged metropolitan area. Winfrey established her own production business and obtained the rights to own the television program. Winfrey supplanted Bill Cosby as the sole African American on the Forbes 400 when she was 41 years old, with a net worth of $340 million. Winfrey was reportedly the wealthiest African American of the twentieth century by the year 2000, with a net worth of $800 million. "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon" is a University of Illinois course that emphasizes Winfrey's financial ability. In 2006, Winfrey made an estimated $260 million, five times more than Simon Cowell, the second-highest paid television star in the US. She was making $275 million per year by 2008.

Winfrey was the first Black woman to become a billionaire in 2003 and the only Black billionaire in the world from 2004 to 2006 according to Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires. Winfrey, one of the wealthiest celebrities of all time, surpassed former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to become the wealthiest self-made woman in the United States in 2014 with a net worth of more than $2.9 billion.

Opinions on matters of religion

Baptist was Oprah's religious upbringing. Early in her life, she would give talks to local Southern Baptist Convention churches, the majority of whom were African American. These groups were frequently quite devout and knew a lot about topics like evangelical Protestantism, the Black church, and being born-again.

According to a report, "I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything." Additionally, she said, "Doubt means don't. When you don't know what to do, do nothing until you do know what to do. Because the doubt is your inner voice or the voice of God or whatever you choose to call it. It is your instinct trying to tell you something is off. That's how I have found myself to be led spiritually, because that's your spiritual voice saying to you, 'let's think about it.' So when you don't know what to do, do nothing."

Oprah has professed her faith in Christ and named Acts 17:28 as her favorite scripture from the Bible.

The Potter's House is a Dallas Evangelical church that Oprah frequents.

* Various*

Having lost her first kid when she was fourteen years old, Winfrey had no desire to have any more children. The interview took place in 2017 and she told Vanity Fair, "I didn't want babies. I wouldn't have been a good mom for babies. I don't have the patience. I have the patience for puppies but that's a quick stage!"

The power to affect

Positions ===

Various publications have praised Winfrey, naming her "arguably the world's most powerful woman" on CNN and TIME, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" on The American Spectator, "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" on TIME, and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2011 on the same occasion. There is just one individual who has made it to the latter list 10 times, and that is Winfrey.

In a cover story piece featuring Winfrey, Life magazine referred to her as "America's most powerful woman" and named her as the most influential Black person of her generation. Life also rated her as the most important woman of the twentieth century. According to USA Today's 2007 rankings, Winfrey was the most significant Black person and most important woman of the preceding 25 years. Winfrey was named by both Ladies' Home Journal and then-Senator Barack Obama "may be the most influential woman in the country" in 2007, with Obama himself listing Winfrey as the most powerful woman in America. Winfrey made history in 1998 when she topped Entertainment Weekly's list of the 101 most influential individuals in the entertainment business. She was the first African American and a woman to do so. In2005,2007,2008,2010, and 2013, she was named by Forbes as the most powerful celebrity in the world.

She was awarded the most influential woman in entertainment in 2008 by The Hollywood Reporter, while serving as chairperson of Harpo Inc. Forbes has twice ranked her among the 100 most powerful women in the world: in 2014 she was fourteenth and in 2023 she will be thirty-first. Along with Jesus Christ, Elvis Presley, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Winfrey was chosen to Life magazine's 2010 list of 100 persons who transformed the world. Only Winfrey, who is still alive, made the cut.

Such evaluations appear to have the support of columnist Maureen Dowd. In a 2006 interview with The Guardian, Dowd stated: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protégé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah - she is a straight forward success story." Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope. Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, in my opinion, in the world. Oprah Winfrey is, in my opinion, the most influential lady on a global scale, not only in the United States. That's right; the rewards to everybody who joins her program are exponential. She has the following, the reputation, the skill, and the ability to become incredibly rich and powerful all by herself.

In 2005, Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked No. 9 overall on the list of greatest Americans. Polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have been inconsistent. A Gallup poll from November 2003 estimated that 73% of American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another poll from January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, but it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same poll in October 2007. A December 2007 Fox News poll placed the figure at 55%. According to Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the most admired women in the world. Her highest rating came in 2007, when she was statistically tied with Hillary Clinton for first place. I

With her 1989 NAACP Image Award, she entered the hall of fame.

The term "Oprahfication"

Time magazine credited Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from Phil Donahue's "report talk": "Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. The term "Oprahfication" was coined by the Wall Street Journal and refers to public confession as a form of therapy in which Winfrey disclosed intimate details about her weight problems, turbulent love life, and sexual abuse, while also crying alongside her guests. It joins us for meals and strikes up conversations on lonely afternoons, just like a family member. Taking this contradiction to heart,... Just by being herself, she manages to evoke empathy. Because of the lasting impact her talk show revolution has had on American culture and daily life, it will be Winfrey's lasting legacy and a testament to her genius.

"Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes' on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create," Newsweek stated, referring to the "Oprahfication" of politics, which includes "Oprah-style debates" and Bill Clinton being characterized as "the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics."

Ms. noted in November 1988 that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality [...] But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant – damned near gorgeous – with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

What effect do daytime talk shows have on LGBT individuals?

The tabloid talk show genre was popularized and changed by Winfrey—a warm, intimate, and personally confessing host—rather than by Phil Donahue, who is said to have been its pioneer. Winfrey's success in popularizing the genre led to an industry that flourished after her, including Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. In his book Freaks Talk Back, Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson argues that the genre did more than any other development of the 20th century to mainstream and socially accept LGBT people. In the book's editorial review, Michael Bronski stated, "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had al People from outside the sexual mainstream are now appearing in living rooms across America practically every day of the week thanks to the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows like Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo. Gamson attributes this to the tabloid talk shows normalizing alternative sexual orientations and identities in mainstream society. For instance, a Time magazine article from the early 21st century discusses gays coming out of the closet at younger and younger ages and the dramatic decline in gay suicide rates. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows made traditional forms of media acceptance of gays.

In "The Puppy Episode" (airing in April 1997) of the comedy Ellen, Winfrey portrayed the role of the therapist to whom both the fictitious and real-life Ellen DeGeneres revealed their sexual orientation as lesbian.

What is "The Oprah Effect"?

The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "the Oprah Effect". The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author. In Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America (2005), Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."

When author Jonathan Franzen's book was selected for the Book Club, he reportedly "cringed" and said selected books tend to be "schmaltzy". After James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was found to contain fabrications in 2006, Winfrey confronted him on her show over the breach of trust. In 2009, Winfrey apologized to Frey for the public confrontation. During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey said she was stopped cold from eating another burger. Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers $11 million. Winfrey was represented by attorney Chip Babcock and, on February 26, after a two-month trial in an Amarillo, Texas, court, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. Winfrey's ability to launch other successful talk shows such as Dr. Phil, The Dr. Oz Show, and Rachael Ray has also been cited as examples of "The Oprah Effect".

The world of politics

By conducting an experiment, Matthew Baum and Angela Jamison tested the hypothesis that "Politically unaware individuals who consume soft news will be more likely to vote consistently than their counterparts who do not consume soft news." Their results showed that low-awareness individuals who watched soft news shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show were 14% more likely to vote consistently than low-awareness individuals who watched only hard news.

Winfrey states she is a political independent who has "earned the right to think for myself and to vote for myself". She endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. On September 25, 2006, Winfrey made her first endorsement of Obama for president on Larry King Live, the first time she endorsed a political candidate running for office. Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the Democratic primary race and that without it, Obama would have lost the nomination. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007, at her Santa Barbara estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina, event on December 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of 2007. An analysis by two economists at the University of Maryland, College Park estimated that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for between 420,000 and 1,600,000 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary alone, based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska. The results suggest that in the sampled states, Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for the difference in the popular vote between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, reported being so impressed by Winfrey's endorsement that he considered offering Winfrey Obama's vacant senate seat, describing Winfrey as "the most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president," with "a voice larger than all 100 senators combined". Winfrey responded by stating that although she was absolutely not interested, she did feel she could be a senator. The Topps trading card company memorialized Oprah's involvement in the campaign by featuring her on a card in a set commemorating Obama's road to the White House.

Winfrey gave a speech lasting over 20 minutes at a fundraiser in Arlington, Virginia, in April 2014. Lavern Chatman was running for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democratic Party candidate. Winfrey still went to the event despite the fact that Chatman had been found guilty in 2001 for her part in a scheme to steal at least $1.4 million in wages from hundreds of nursing home employees in the District of Columbia.

While endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and calling Donald Trump a "demagogue" in 2016, Winfrey went door-to-door for Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, in 2018 and gave half a million dollars to the March for Our Lives student demonstration in support of stricter gun control laws.

While Winfrey acknowledged that it was "a humbling thing to have people think you can run the country," she stated in 2018 that she "would not be able to do it" when asked about the possibility of her own presidential run, most notably in the run-up to the 2020 election, when reports suggested that she was seriously contemplating a campaign for the Democratic nomination. The industry is unclean. Though she eventually campaigned for Joe Biden in the general election, Winfrey hinted that she would officially support a contender in the 2020 Democratic primary but ultimately decided against it.

While visiting the US in early 2018, Winfrey met with Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammad bin Salman.

While she did endorse Republican Mehmet Oz's show in the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate election, Winfrey backed Democrat John Fetterman instead. In the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election, she backed Baltimore author Wes Moore in the Democratic primary and co-hosted a virtual fundraiser for him in June. Winfrey went on to attend and speak at Moore's inauguration as governor on January 18, 2023.

Joining forces with organizations such as Advancement Project, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Color Of Change, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, The King Center, The Lawyers' Committee, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Action Network, National Bar Association, National Council of Negro Women, Sigma Gamma Rho, Southern Poverty Law Center, VoteRunLead, and Vote.org, Winfrey established OWN Your Vote in 2022, a nonpartisan organization committed to voter registration and an outreach campaign aimed at empowering Black women to cast their ballots in the upcoming November election.

During the 2024 Democratic National Convention on August 21, 2024, Winfrey announced her support for Kamala Harris for president of the United States.

Leadership on a spiritual level

Christianity Today published an article titled "The Church of O" in 2002, concluding that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of a spiritual leader.'" (Naacel P. Johnson, 2000). Marcia Z. Nelson's book The Gospel According to Oprah echoes this sentiment. Since the mid-1990s, Winfrey's show has focused on uplifting and inspirational themes. Some viewers have said that the show has motivated them to help Congolese women and build an orphanage. A scientific study conducted by psychological scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Plymouth, and University of California used an uplifting clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show in an experiment. The subjects were found to be twice as helpful as those who had been assigned to watch a British comedy. The researchers

An American spiritual teacher named Gary Zukav began an ongoing conversation with Winfrey in 1998 and made 35 appearances on her television show. Winfrey has stated that she has a copy of Zukav's book, The Seat of the Soul, by her bedside, which she describes as one of her favorite books of all time.

On the season premiere of Winfrey's 13th season, Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series Futurama alluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that "Oprahism" is a mainstream religion in 3000 AD. Twelve days after the September 11 attacks, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani asked Winfrey to serve as host of a Prayer for America service at New York City's Yankee Stadium, which was attended by former president Bill Clinton and New York senator Hillary Clinton. Leading up to the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, Winfrey aired a controversial show called "Islam 101" in which she portrayed Islam as a religion of peace, calling it "the most misunderstood of the three major religions". In 2002, George W. Bush invited Winfrey to join a US delegation that included adviser Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice, planning to go to Afghanistan to celebrate the return of Afghan girls to school. The "Oprah strategy" was designed to portray the War on Terror in a positive light; however, when Winfrey refused to participate, the trip was postponed.

Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote: "Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America." This was in reference to the criticisms leveled against Winfrey's show in the days leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to Shapiro. For the New York Times Best Seller lists, she has final say. Fourteen million people tune in every day to her show because of her sentimental presentation. Oprah isn't only a cultural powerhouse; she's also a potentially hazardous political force, with wildly fluctuating views on today's big problems. Winfrey reflected on these conflicts in 2006 when she said, "I once did a show titled Is War the Only Answer? The amount of hate mail I've gotten, including one that said "Go back to Africa," is unprecedented in my professional experience. After Winfrey faced accusations of being un-American for even bringing up the subject, filmmaker Michael Moore stepped in to defend her, complimenting her for airing anti-war video that other media outlets refused to air and urging her to seek the presidency.

Network broadcasts of a news conference in which President George W. Bush and Colin Powell presented the case for war disrupted a February 2003 series on Winfrey showing video from people all around the globe begging America not to go to war in numerous East Coast cities.

In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the self-help program The Secret. The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts or 'vibrations', which will then cause them to attract more positive vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Peter Birkenhead of Salon magazine argued that this idea is pseudoscience and psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggests Winfrey's promotion of it is irresponsible given her influence. In 2007, skeptic and magician James Randi accused Winfrey of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show. In 2008, Winfrey endorsed author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, which sold several million extra copies after being selected for her book club. During a Webinar class, in which she promoted the book, Winfrey stated "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. Along with many other Christian leaders, Frank Pastore of KKLA's Christian radio talk show criticized Winfrey's views, stating that "if she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought." Pastore argued that if religion is merely a believing experience, then it cannot be truly God.

The animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) honored Winfrey as their 2008 Person of the Year for her efforts to use her platform to advocate for the most vulnerable among us, including animals. PETA lauded Winfrey for her work in exposing the atrocities committed by puppy mills and factory farms, and for promoting the cruelty-free vegan diet that she had experimented with on her talk show.

Following the launch of the Super Soul Sunday and SuperSoul Sessions programs on Harpo Productions' SuperSoul TV, Winfrey selected 100 individuals for the SuperSoul 100 list of "innovators and visionaries who are aligned on a mission to move humanity forward" in 2016. This list was followed in 2010 by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News criticizing the interviews Winfrey had filmed in Denmark in 2009, which portrayed the Danes as the happiest people in the world.

"You cannot be my friend and use that word around me..." Winfrey remarked in response to the usage of the N-word. When I hear that, my mind goes to the folks who heard it while they dangled from a tree.

*Basis of support*

When it was at its peak in 1991–1992, with 13.1 million U.S. viewers per day, The Oprah Winfrey Show had a steady decline to 7.4 million daily viewers by 2003, a brief uptick to about 9 million in 2005, and then another downturn to about 7.3 million in 2008, but it was still the highest-rated talk show.

With an estimated 46 million US weekly viewers and 140 countries airing her show in 2008, Winfrey was named America's favorite TV personality in 1998, 2000, 2002–2006, and 2009. Among women, Democrats, political moderates, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Southerners, and East Coasters, Winfrey's popularity was most pronounced, according to the Harris poll.

Beyond the United States, Winfrey's popularity in the Arab world has been on the rise. In 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Arab satellite channel MBC 4 aired reruns of her show nonstop due to the record number of female viewers in Saudi Arabia. In 2008, the New York Times reported that The Oprah Winfrey Show, with Arabic subtitles, was broadcast twice a week on MBC 4. Winfrey's modest dress and attitude of triumph over abuse and adversity have made her an idol for some Saudi women.

Winfrey made history in 2004 when she was named one of the 50 most charitable Americans; she maintained that position until 2010. By 2012, she had donated about $400 million to educational charities.

During the summer of 2006, Winfrey took her staff and their families on a vacation to Hawaii to celebrate two decades on national TV and to thank them for their hard work. As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over 400 scholarships to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. She was the first to receive the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film.

After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013, Winfrey gave $12 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Angel Network

Founded in 1998 by Winfrey, Oprah's Angel Network was a global charity that gave grants to nonprofits and supported charitable projects. It raised over $80 million, with $1 million coming from Jon Bon Jovi. Winfrey herself paid for all the administrative costs of the charity, so every cent went toward charity programs. The charity ceased accepting donations and closed its doors in May 2010 when Oprah's show ended.

The country of South Africa

In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show, "Oprah's Christmas Kindness", in which Winfrey travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys, and school supplies. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7 million. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg, South Africa. The school, set over 22 acres, opened in January 2007 with an enrollment of 150 pupils (increasing to 450) and features state-of-the-art classrooms, computer and science laboratories, a library, a theatre, and a beauty salon. Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others. Critics considered the school elitist and unnecessarily luxurious. Winfrey rejected the claims, saying: "If you are surrounded by beautiful things and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you." Winfrey, who has no surviving biological children, described maternal feelings towards the girls at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Winfrey teaches a class at the school via satellite.

1989 – The Oprah Winfrey Show (supervising producer – 8 episodes, 1989–2011)

1989 – The Women of Brewster Place (TV miniseries) (executive producer)

1992 – Nine (TV documentary) (executive producer)

1992 – Overexposed (TV movie) (executive producer)

1993 – ABC Afterschool Special (TV series) (producer – 1 episode "Shades of a Single Protein") (producer)

1993 – Michael Jackson Talks to... Oprah Live (TV special) (executive producer)

1997 – Before Women Had Wings (TV movie) (producer)

1998 – The Wedding (TV miniseries) (executive producer)

1998 – Beloved (producer)

1998 – David and Lisa (TV movie) (executive producer)

1999 – Tuesdays with Morrie (TV movie) (executive producer)

2001 – Amy & Isabelle (TV movie) (executive producer, producer)

2002 – Oprah After the Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2005 – Their Eyes Were Watching God (TV movie) (executive producer)

2006 – Legends Ball (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2007 – Oprah's Big Give (TV series) (executive producer)

2007 – The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)

2007 – Building a Dream: The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2007 – Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day (TV movie) (executive producer)

2007 – The Great Debaters (producer)

2009 – The Dr. Oz Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2009 – Precious (executive producer)

2009 – Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special (TV special) (executive producer)

2010 – The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)

2011 – Your OWN Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2011 – Extraordinary Mom (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2011 – Serving Life (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2014 – The Hundred-Foot Journey (producer)

2014 – Selma (producer)

2016–2022 – Queen Sugar (co-creator and executive producer)

2016–2020 – Greenleaf (executive producer)

2017 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (TV movie) (executive producer)

2018 – Love Is (executive producer)

2019 – When They See Us (executive producer)

2019 – Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland (executive producer)

2019 – David Makes Man (executive producer)

2020 – The Water Man (executive producer)

2022 – Sidney (documentary film) (producer)

2023 – The Color Purple (producer)

By Oprah Winfrey

Winfrey, Oprah (1996). The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in Her Own Words

Winfrey, Oprah (1998). Journey to Beloved (Photography by Ken Regan)

Winfrey, Oprah (1998). Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life (co-authored with Bob Greene)

Winfrey, Oprah (2000). Oprah Winfrey: The Soul and Spirit of a Superstar

Winfrey, Oprah (2014). What I Know for Sure

Winfrey, Oprah (2016). Mr. or Ms. Just Right (co-authored with B. Grace)

Winfrey, Oprah (2017). Food, Health and Happiness

Winfrey, Oprah (2017). The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations

Winfrey, Oprah (2017). The Wisdom Journal: The Companion to The Wisdom of Sundays

Winfrey, Oprah (2019). The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose

Winfrey, Oprah (2021). What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (co-authored with B. Perry)

About Oprah Winfrey

Mair, George (2001). Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story. Citadel Press. ISBN 1-55972-250-9.

Cooper, Irene (2007). Oprah Winfrey. Viking. ISBN 0-670-06162-X.

American Library Association Honorary Membership (1997)

Honorary degrees from: Princeton University, Howard University, Duke University, Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of the Free State, Tennessee State University, Spelman College, Colorado College, Smith College, Skidmore College

Mural including her image by Shawn Michael Warren in Chicago (painted in 2020)

Portrait of her by Shawn Michael Warren for the National Portrait Gallery (unveiled in 2023)