Where can I find information about Oprah Winfrey; here is a biography of her life and accomplishments.
"I've always known I was born to greatness," so said Oprah Winfrey of herself. So influential is the talk show host that when she plugged an unknown author on her show, the author's book became a bestseller. When she mentioned the existence of Mad Cow Disease in other countries, cattle futures dropped overnight. She was even sued by some of the farmers, for defaming the cattle industry, although a jury of eight women and five men acquitted her.
When she renegotiated her contract for her show, she became the world's highest paid entertainer. When she established a headquarters in one Chicago neighborhood, the area experienced an economic revival.
She is the third richest woman in history, behind only Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball. Oprah is the first black billionaire.
It wasn't always so easy for Oprah as she has told sometimes on her show. Born to unwed teenage parents, she was often in and out of trouble in her youth. She lived on her grandmother's farm. When her mother threatned to send her to a home for wayward youth, Oprah was instead sent from home with her mother, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to live with her father, Vernon, in Nashville, Tennessee. Under his discipline she seemed to thrive.
She attended Tennesse State University, where she majored in speech and drama. She was also named Miss Tennessee.
At 19 she became a news anchor for a local CBS station. After graduating in 1976, she became a co-anchor for ABC news in Baltimore. She later became a co-host of the morning show, People Are Talking.
She went from there to Chicago where she turned a faltering A.M. Chicago into a success and consistently got better ratings than Phil Donahue in his own backyard. In 1986 the show went national and was renamed, "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
While other talk shows in the 1990's started to veer more and more toward sensationalism and subjects involving pornography, prostitutes and psycopaths, she always attempted to have a higher quality.
Oprah attempted to have those type of subjects even less and featured more uplifting subjects, such as poetry, pop psychology and others. One show was on overcoming drug abuse, and a tearful Oprah confessed on national television that she had used cocaine when in her twenties. Other shows have featured heroes who have risked their lives or given their lives for others, sexless marriages, shows on whether certain people should get married, advice for couples and financial advice.
Oprah Winfrey is also known for her work in helping charities. This has included her own school, Tennessee, State University and her own Family for Better Lives Foundation. A children's right's activist, a bill she lobbied for, for a national computer database listing child molesters, was passed by Congress.
On her show her Angel Network has collected more than $3.5 million for college scholarships and 200 homes for Habitat for Hummanity.
"Over 1,000 people now have a place to call home and 150 deserving students have a brighter future, thanks to the efforts and donations of our viewers," she said on her website.
She has also begun to give away $50,000 to local organizations through Angel Tree on Mondays.
"This is one of my proudest moments in television," she said of the gifts. "It involves our Angel Network giving away a lot of money."
As an actress, she played an abused wife in the movie, "The Color Purple," and was nominated for an Academy Award.
A lot of people have said Oprah and her show has changed their lives. They might agree that she was born to greatness.
