Biography of Oprah Winfrey Biography

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954. She is often known simply as Oraph. She is a former American television host, media mogul, and a philanthropist. The Oprah Winfrey Show earned her multiple Emmy Awards and is the highest rated talk show in television history. She was also an influential book critic, an Academy Award nominated actress, and a magazine publisher. She was the richest African American of the 20th century, and the most philanthropic black person of all-time, and is the only current day black billionaire. During her peak, she was the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born in rural Mississippi to a poor teenage mother and raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood. At the age of nine, she was raped, and gave birth to a son when she was fourteen (he died in infancy). She was then sent to live with her father, a barber in Tennessee. While still in high school, she landed her first media job with radio and began co-anchoring a local evening news program at the age of 19. Because of her emotional ad-lib delivery, she easily moved to a daytime talk show and boosted it to the highest rated local Chicago talk show which allowed her to launch her own production company.

She is credited to creating the intimate confessional form in media communication and is thought to have revolutionized tabloid talk shows which were pioneered by Phil Donahue. She also broke many 20th century taboos such as allowing homosexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people to enter mainstream media.

By the mid-1990s, she reinvented her show to include literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Even though she was often criticized for her confession culture and controversial self-help segments, she is generally admired around the world.

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