Television & Film

Television:

After participating in various news broadcasts and talk shows, Oprah Winfrey was relocated to Chicago to host a low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. Within only months after Oprah took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking some of the highest rated talk shows in Chicago. The AM Chicago talk show was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and was expanded to a full hour.

In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview with Michael Jackson which became the fourth most watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of one hundred million.

Film:

In 1985 Oprah Winfrey co-starred in the film adaptation of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker.

In 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film "Beloved" based upon a novel by Toni Morrison. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods.

She has voiced for Charlotte's Web, as Gussie the goose. She is also the voice of Judge Bumbleden in Bee Movie.