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Oprah Gail Winfrey, commonly referred to as just Oprah, is the most successful female talk show host in the history of U.S. television. She is also an extremely successful entrepreneur and has become one of the most respected and influential Americans. Oprah was born in 1954 in the very small town of Kosciusko, in rural Mississippi. She was originally given the biblical name Orpah, but it was spelled erroneously on her birth certificate as Oprah. Her parents were teenagers who never married. Much of her childhood was very difficult, as she experienced abject poverty, sexual abuse, weight problems and problems with drugs. She went into broadcasting in the early 1970s. After anchoring and reporting TV news in Nashville, Tennessee and Baltimore, Maryland, she landed a job in 1984 on a morning talk show in Chicago. The next year she made her movie debut in The Color Purple (based on the Alice Walker book) and was nominated for an Oscar. In 1986 she launched The Oprah Winfrey Show, a television talk show that features celebrity interviews and discussions of social issues. The show became an immediate hit, and it led to a number of other very successful business ventures, including a book club and a lifestyle magazine. As a result of her great popularity and business acumen, Oprah became a millionaire at the age of 32 and is now a billionaire. She was the richest African-American of the twentieth century and probably the greatest African-American philanthropist of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Created November 1, 2006. |