Who is Oprah Winfrey?
Oprah Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century, was once the world's only black billionaire, and the greatest black philanthropist in U.S. history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world
Overview
- Nicknames
- @oprah, Oprah
Trivia
- First African American woman billionaire in history and first African American female entrepreneur to appear on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
- Over the 25-year run of her daytime TV talk show, she never once missed a day through absenteeism.
- Is the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show.
- Over the course of her 25 years hosting The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986), she taped 217 episodes dedicated to sexual abuse, having been a survivor of such abuse herself as a young girl. She was instrumental in the passage of the Oprah Bill, in the early 1990s. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and is aimed at stopping child abuse.
- Raised in abject poverty, she received her first pair of shoes at age 6 (1960). She learned to read at age 2½. In fact, when it was time for her to start kindergarten, she wrote a note to her teacher insisting she should be in first grade. The teacher agreed and after finishing that grade she was then skipped to third grade.