Winfrey, Oprah Gail (1954– )

US television talk-show host and actor. She is best known for her multi-Emmy award winning talk show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, which was syndicated in 1986 and went on to become the most popular talk show on US television. Winfrey received an Academy Award nomination for her role in The Color Purple (1985). She produced and starred in Beloved (1998) which she produced, based on the novel by Toni Morrison.

Winfrey was a television journalist at WVOL in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1971 to 1972 and later co-hosted Baltimore is Talking from 1977 to 1984. In 1984 she hosted ABC's AM Chicago, the success of which resulted in the Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey has also greatly influenced US publishing through her Oprah Winfrey Book Club and her popular women's lifestyle magazine, O. She launced Oxygen Media, a cable channel for women, in 1998.

In 1998 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. When Forbes magazine published its list of the USA's billionaires for the year 2003, it disclosed that Winfrey was the first African-American woman to become a billionaire.