WATCH OPRAH INTERVIEW ON BARBARA WALTERS

CHECK THE INTERVIEW:

Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MsmbERGmg
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geIWGJ12vQ4&feature=related
Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axSN0cyu8Dg&feature=related
Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMgZ5fFae1s&feature=related
Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Un1LKbpCAg&feature=related

Oprah's Official Website: www.oprah.com/

BIO

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.^[1] She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century,^[2] the greatest black philanthropist in American history,^[3][4] and was once the world's only black billionaire.^[5][6] She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.^[7][8]
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.^[9] Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place^[5] she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.
Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication,^[10] she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized^[10][11] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue,^[10] which a Yale study claims broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.^[12][13] By the mid 1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, ^[14] she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.^[15]
From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.

Oprah Winfrey
Winfrey at her 50th birthday party at Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, in 2004
Born	Orpah Gail Winfrey January 29, 1954 (1954-01-29) (age 56) Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States
Residence	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Occupation	Talk show host, media proprietor, actress
Years active	1983–Present
Political party	Democratic Party
Partner	Stedman Graham
Signature

Television

Winfrey on the first national broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies.^[33] It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986.^[34] Winfrey's syndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number one day-time talk show in America. Their much publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. Time magazine wrote, "Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue [...] What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye [...] They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session."^[35] TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said, "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular."^[36] Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world"^[36] and Martha Bayles of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots."^[36]
In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a tabloid talk show. In the mid 1990s Winfrey then adopted a less tabloid-oriented format, hosting shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality and meditation and interviewing celebrities on social issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse. Her final show is scheduled to air in September 2011.^[37]
In addition to her talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the 1989 drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, as well as a short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place.
As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen. She is also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards). On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled to launch in 2009, but is now due to launch on January 1, 2011.

Source: Wikipedia