Profiles: Oprah Winfrey
Named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century by Time magazine, Oprah Winfrey and her rise to fame are the stuff that dreams are made of. At an early age, Winfrey showed just how precocious a child she was when she asked her kindergarten teacher to advance her to the first grade. However, her home life was anything but ideal. Her parents separated and when she was six, Oprah moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother. Unfortunately, these were her darkest years: From the time she was nine, male family members and acquaintances sexually abused her. She ended up running away when she was 13 and sent to a juvenile detention home, but was denied admission because of a lack of beds. She was then sent to Nashville to live with her father, who helped her get her life back on track. A tough disciplinarian, Vernon Winfrey made sure his daughter kept a strict curfew and had her read a book a week and then turn in a book report to him.
All the discipline paid off: after earning a B.A. in speech communications and performing arts from Tennessee State College, Oprah accepted a reporter/anchor position with WTVF-TV in Nashville.
In 1984, she moved to Chicago to host WLS-TV’s “AM Chicago”, a fledgling local talk show that she helped turn into a smashing success. A year later, the show’s format was expanded to a full hour and debuted as “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. It quickly became the number-one talk show nationally, earning her numerous Emmy Awards and accolades.
Oprah is also a talented actress who captivated audiences with her poignant portrayal of Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 The Color Purple. Her performance earned her nominations for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
It was her desire to bring her own projects into creation that prompted her to form her own production company, HARPO Productions, Inc. in 1986. Two years later, her company acquired ownership of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, making Oprah the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show.
In 1993, President Clinton signed the “Oprah Bill” into law, establishing a national database of convicted child abusers that Winfrey arduously lobbied for, which is now available to law enforcement agencies and concerned parties across the country.
And when Forbes magazine published its list of the country’s billionaires for the year 2003, Oprah made history as the first African-American woman to become a billionaire.
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