Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey (born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi) rose from poverty to become a media mogul who hosted “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for 25 years (1986-2011), then in 2011 started her OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) cable channel. She ran the movie and TV production company Harpo Films (1993-2013), a division of her Harpo Productions. Harpo is Oprah spelled backward.

Oprah acted with Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple (1985) directed by Steven Spielberg from the 1983 novel by Alice Walker, in Beloved (1998) directed by Jonathan Demme from the 1987 novel by Toni Morrison, she played the wife of Forest Whitaker in The Butler (2013) directed by Lee Daniels, civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper in Selma (2014) directed by Ava DuVernay with David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King. She plays Mrs. Which in A Wrinkle in Time (2018) directed by Ava DuVernay from the 1962 novel by Madeleine L’Engle.

On television, Oprah played Deborah Lacks, the daughter who tells her mother’s story to reporter Rebecca Skloot, in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017).

Read Oprah Winfrey: Recipient Of The Cecil B. deMille Award 2018 by Ana Maria Bahiana.

See The Extraordinary Life of Oprah Winfrey, by Ana Maria Bahiana.

Read Ready for My deMille: Profiles in Excellence – Oprah Winfrey, 2018 by Philip Berk.