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Oprah Winfrey est une Actrice, Producteur et Remerciements Américaine née le 29 janvier 1954 à Kosciusko (Etats-Unis)

Oprah Winfrey

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Nom de naissance Oprah Gail Winfrey
Nationalité Etats-Unis
Naissance 29 janvier 1954 (70 ans) à Kosciusko (Etats-Unis)
Fondateur de Harpo Productions
Récompenses People's Choice Awards, Médaille présidentielle de la liberté, Primetime Emmy Award, Distinction, Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Peabody Awards

Oprah Gail Winfrey /ˈoʊpɹə ɡeɪl ˈwɪnfɹi/ communément appelée Oprah, née le 29 janvier 1954 à Kosciusko (Mississippi), est une animatrice et productrice américaine de télévision et de cinéma, actrice, critique littéraire et éditrice de magazines. Elle est surtout connue pour son talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show produit par sa propre société Harpo Productions basée à Chicago. Son talk show a gagné plusieurs prix, et est devenu le programme le plus vu dans l'histoire de la télévision jusqu'à son dernier épisode le 25 mai 2011. Oprah est également actrice, elle a été nommée aux Oscars. Elle a été classée la personnalité afro-américaine la plus riche du XX siècle, l'Afro-américaine la plus philanthrope de tous les temps, et est la milliardaire noire la plus riche dans le monde. Selon le magazine Forbes, elle est la deuxième fortune de l'industrie du divertissement.

Elle est généralement considérée comme ayant popularisé et révolutionné le genre du talk show people lancé par Phil Donahue. Au milieu des années 1990, elle a réinventé son talk show pour se concentrer sur la littérature, le développement personnel, la spiritualité, et la méditation. Malgré les critiques sur la culture de la confession publique qu'elle a initiée et l’apologie des combines, elle est généralement admirée pour avoir surmonté l'adversité et être devenue une philanthrope.

En France, elle s'est surtout fait connaître par l'interview événement (suivie en direct dans le monde entier) qu'elle a réalisée avec Michael Jackson en janvier 1993, au domicile de ce dernier en Californie. Elle a aussi fait parler d'elle lors d'un scandale contre l'enseigne Hermès, la boutique parisienne lui ayant refusé l'accès, un quart d'heure avant la fermeture.

En 2006, elle est devenue un soutien de la première heure de Barack Obama. Une analyse a estimé qu'elle a permis l'obtention de plus d’un million de voix dans la course primaire des démocrates de 2008, un succès pour lequel le gouverneur de l'Illinois a envisagé de lui offrir un siège au Sénat des États-Unis. Elle aurait gagné 315 millions de dollars sur la période 2009-2010. Elle est également perçue comme une potentielle candidate à l'élection présidentielle américaine de 2020 pour affronter Donald Trump.

Biographie

Homes

Winfrey currently lives on "The Promised Land", her 42-acre (170,000 m) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California. Winfrey also owns a house in Lavallette, New Jersey; an apartment in Chicago; an estate on Fisher Island, Florida; a ski house in Telluride, Colorado; and property on Maui, Hawaii and Antigua. Her base during filming of Winfrey's show is Chicago, so she spends time in the neighborhood of Streeterville.

Romantic history
A self-described promiscuous teen who was a victim of sexual abuse, Winfrey gave birth at the age of 14 to a boy who died shortly after.

Winfrey's high school sweetheart Anthony Otey recalled an innocent courtship that began in Winfrey's senior year of high school, from which he saved hundreds of love notes; Winfrey conducted herself with dignity and as a model student. The two spoke of getting married, but Otey claimed to have always secretly known that Winfrey was destined for a far greater life than he could ever provide. She broke up with him on Valentine's Day of her senior year.

In 1971, several months after breaking up with Otey, Winfrey met William "Bubba" Taylor at Tennessee State University. According to CBS journalist George Mair, Taylor was Winfrey's "first intense, to die for love affair". Winfrey helped get Taylor a job at WVOL, and according to Mair, "did everything to keep him, including literally begging him on her knees to stay with her." Taylor, however, was unwilling to leave Nashville with Winfrey when she moved to Baltimore to work at WJZ-TV in June 1976. "We really did care for each other", Winfrey would later recall. "We shared a deep love. A love I will never forget."

In the 1970s, Winfrey had a romantic relationship with John Tesh. Biographer Kitty Kelley claims that Tesh split with Winfrey over the pressure of having an interracial relationship.

When WJZ-TV management criticized Winfrey for crying on the air while reporting tragedies and were unhappy with her physical appearance (especially when her hair fell out as the result of a bad perm), Winfrey turned to reporter Lloyd Kramer for comfort. "Lloyd was just the best", Winfrey would later recall. "That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through the whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun romance I ever had."

According to Mair, when Kramer moved to NBC in New York, Winfrey had a love affair with a married man who had no intention of leaving his wife. Winfrey would later recall: "I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless without him. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and pleading with him". Winfrey became so depressed that on September 8, 1981, she wrote a suicide note to best friend Gayle King instructing King to water her plants. "That suicide note had been much overplayed" Winfrey told Ms. magazine. "I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I did it; something really good would happen and I'd miss it."

According to Winfrey, her emotional turmoil gradually led to a weight problem: "The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much. So I'd end up with these cruel self-absorbed guys who'd tell me how selfish I was, and I'd say 'Oh thank you, you're so right' and be grateful to them. Because I had no sense that I deserved anything else. Which is also why I gained so much weight later on. It was the perfect way of cushioning myself against the world's disapproval."

Winfrey later confessed to smoking crack cocaine with a man she was romantically involved with during the same era. She explained on her show: "I always felt that the drug itself is not the problem but that I was addicted to the man." She added: "I can't think of anything I wouldn't have done for that man."

Winfrey was allegedly involved in a second drug-related love affair. Self-proclaimed former boyfriend Randoph Cook said they lived together for several months in 1985 and did drugs. In 1997, Cook tried to sue Winfrey for $20 million for allegedly blocking a tell-all book about their alleged relationship.

Also, in the mid-1980s, Winfrey briefly dated movie critic Roger Ebert, whom she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication.

In 1985, before Winfrey's Chicago talk show had gone national, Haitian filmmaker Reginald Chevalier claims he appeared as a guest on a look-alike segment and began a relationship with Winfrey involving romantic evenings at home, candlelit baths, and dinners with Michael Jordan and Danny Glover. Chevalier says Winfrey ended the relationship when she met Stedman Graham.

Winfrey and her boyfriend Stedman Graham have been together since 1986. They were engaged to be married in November 1992, but the ceremony never took place.

Close friends

Winfrey's best friend since their early twenties is Gayle King. King was formerly the host of The Gayle King Show and is currently an editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Since 1997, when Winfrey played the therapist on an episode of the sitcom Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, Winfrey and King have been the target of persistent rumors that they were gay. "I understand why people think we're gay", Winfrey says in the August 2006 issue of O magazine. "There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual?" "I've told nearly everything there is to tell. All my stuff is out there. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please."

Winfrey has also had a long friendship with Maria Shriver after they met in Baltimore. Winfrey considered Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her mentor and close friend; she called Angelou her "mother-sister-friend." Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for Angelou and 150 guests for Angelou's 70th birthday in 1998, and in 2008, threw her "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Personal wealth
Born in rural poverty, then raised by a mother on welfare in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company because of the success and the amount of revenue the show generated. At age 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. With a 2000 net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to be the richest African American of the 20th century. Owing to her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Illinois created the course "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon." Winfrey was the highest paid TV entertainer in the United States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell. By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.

Forbes' international rich list has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in world history. As of 2014 Winfrey has a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars and has overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.