Whoopi Goldberg

Season 4, Episode 407

Original Airdate: October 18, 1998

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Johnson on November 13, 1955. She took her first name from “Whoopi Cushion,” and added on the surname Goldberg to complete her stage name.

She began appearing onstage at the Helena Rubenstein Children's Theatre in in New York at the age of eight, and in the 1970s, played chorus roles in the stage musicals Hair, Pippin and Jesus Christ Superstar. She was part of an improv comedy troupe, and then a monologist, who created a series of different characters.

Mike Nichols caught her act in San Francisco, and helped bring her one-woman show to New York in 1984. The show was a success, and it got her the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast her in her film debut, the adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1985). She was Oscar-nominated for her stand-out performance as Celie.

But Goldberg had trouble finding scripts worthy of her talent, and what followed this auspicious debut were a string of films that were either mediocre, Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), Burglar (1987), Fatal Beauty (1987) if not disastrous, The Telephone (1988), Homer & Eddie (1989). But Whoopi bounced back in a big way with her hysterical and warm performance in Ghost (1990). The role of psychic Oda Mae Brown was intended, as Goldberg describes it, for “someone other than me.” She tells Bravo, “They didn't want me for the movie. They said, You're Whoopi Goldberg and you have too much baggage. I was too famous. Patrick Swayze finally broke them down.” She got the part, and she also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress the first black woman to win the statue since Hattie McDaniel in 1939.

She next co-starred with Sissy Spacek in The Long Walk Home (1990), a film about the Montgomery bus boycott. She joined talented ensemble casts in the comedy Soapdish (1991) and Robert Altman's The Player (1992).

But her major role in 1992 was that of Deloris Van Cartier, the casino bar singer who has to hide out from her gangster boyfriend in a nunnery, in Sister Act. The movie was a huge hit, and brought her a Golden Globe nomination as well as an NAACP Image Award. Subsequent films of note have included Sister Act 2 (1993), The Lion King (1994), Corrina, Corrina (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) and Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Her work is not limited to film, however. She replaced Nathan Lane in the Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Her TV work includes a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and her current daytime hit, a new version of the classic game show Hollywood Sqaures, as well as numerous guest appearances, documentaries and TV movies. She was Emmy-nominated for hosting the Oscars in 1994, 1996 and 1999