There was such a woman with too thick hair, too wide a nose, and too big a chin that even a cosmetic surgeon gave up operating on her.
She has a waist as thick as a bucket, and she laughs even more widely, almost completely out of line with the beautiful women people think of.
But her talk shows attract 33 million viewers a week, and she has even dominated Forbes' most powerful celebrities five times.
Her show is not showy, and it is all her personal appeal that attracts the audience.
Of course, she is not a rich second generation, and her childhood can be said to be more heart-wrenching and painful than the childhood of ordinary people.
But she tells us step by step by herself that the only goal in life is to be true to yourself.
Today we're going to talk about this amazing black American: Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954 in Kosciuszko, a small town in Mississippi, UNITED States.
She was an illegitimate daughter, and after her parents gave birth to her, they each started their own lives, and she was thrown into the care of her grandmother.
My grandmother was a semi-illiterate and didn't know many words, but my grandmother loved to tell stories, especially biblical stories, and often told Oprah the stories she heard from church.
From an early age, Oprah showed an amazing gift for speaking and learning, and at the age of 3 she was able to tell the story of Jesus' resurrection in a lecture hall.
When she was in kindergarten, because she was more literate, she wrote a note to the teacher: "I don't think I belong here, because I know a lot of big characters."
So he was directly arranged to enter the first grade.
Spent 6 years with my grandmother.
At the age of 6, she was placed in Milwaukee, where her mother lived, where she spent her darkest years.
She was defiled by her cousin at the age of 9 and had other relatives abuse her. At the age of 14, she was forced to become pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl who died shortly after birth.
This experience doesn't seem so glorious for anyone, and it can lead to despair and pain.
In the mid-80s, Oprah finally had the courage to mention this past on the show:
"I was almost ruined and I kept telling myself I was healed for so many years, but no" "I feel so ashamed in my heart that I unconsciously blame myself for the actions of those men."
During that time, she smoked, took drugs, drank alcohol, and even directed herself as a robber to rob the house, just to steal her mother's wallet and buy a more fashionable and beautiful glasses. She was almost sent to the juvenile detention center, but could not get in because the bed was full.
There was no doubt that her mother was not a good guardian, and there was no way to communicate between her and Oprah at all.
The mother felt that this rebellious daughter was incurable and had no hope for her life. And she felt that she did not get the love and affection she deserved from her mother. Two people together almost quarrel when they meet.
At the age of 14, her mother had not succeeded in sending her to a juvenile detention center, and the conflict between the two had reached an irreconcilable stage, so the mother did not hesitate to push her to her father's house in Nashville.
Oprah's turn of the road should definitely be thanks to her ruthless mother and stern father and stepmother.
"My father saved my life, and if it weren't for his strict requirements for me back then, I'd probably be a housewife dragging a bunch of children behind me now,"
Her father and stepmother were so obsessed with her transformation.
Her stepmother asked her to memorize words every day and not to eat if she couldn't recite 20. And my father bought back a lot of books for her to read, and also wrote a reading report to verify the results.
In three years, Oprah made a makeover, and she said goodbye to her original debauchery. He first won a $1,000 scholarship for a short speech at a 10,000-member campus club speech contest in Philadelphia.
Then, in 1971, she became Miss Fire In Naswell, and that same year she won the title of Miss Negro of Tennessee. Former street kids entered state university to study mass media and became the first African-American journalist on local television.
Seeing such a significant change, I had to sigh: "Having a stern stepmother is really not a bad thing." ”
Those who have fallen, once they rise, will seize all opportunities.
While everyone else was still worried about finding a job after graduation, Oprah had successfully received an invitation from CBS's Nashville division, and in 1973, as a sophomore, she became the youngest anchor on WTVF television in Nashville (the capital of Tennessee).
After that, Oprah sang all the way, and her future was assorted.
After graduating from college in 1976, she went directly to Baltimore WJZ TV, and at the beginning she hosted the "six o'clock" news program, but because her news style was full of emotion, the news industry at that time was more solemn and cautious. And she was always unqualified as a journalist and wrote news, so the boss arranged for her to host the 5-minute interview program "People Are Talking" that began at 5:30 in the morning.
It was this fortuitous arrangement that completely ignited the magic of this woman. It even stirred up fanaticism throughout the American race.
In 1977, she hosted the "People Are Talking" talk show, and the ratings soared, even surpassing the show of the talk show Phil Downer.
Oprah has an ability to turn decay into magic, she does not need to prepare any questions to chat and talk directly with guests, she even dares to expose her privacy to gain a sense of closeness to the interlocutor, which until now is a difficult point for media people to do.
However, she never takes pleasure in exposing other people's private affairs and humiliation, and she is also able to have a feeling of empathy for the other party's experience, she always comforts the other party's pain in the show, to lead the other party to release pressure, liberation and acceptance of self.
In 1985, she went to work for WLS Television, the Chicago division of ABC, and just a month after taking over the "Chicago Morning" talk show, she let the third-rate talk show jump on the rise. At the end of 1985, "Chicago Morning" was directly renamed "Oprah Winfrey Talk Show" and broadcast simultaneously in 120 cities across the country.
Oprah became the undisputed "talk show queen" in people's minds, and the highest-rated talk show in the history of television was born!
No one knows what magic is in her, but her kind conversation always reassures the interlocutor and moves the audience.
Later, she played on the screen, participating in the film "Purple" by the big director Steven Spielberg, and with her tense performance, the Oscar and Golden Globe awards judges invariably nominated her as a candidate for the Best Supporting Actress Award.
She then meets another person who changed her destiny, Jeff Jackburth, who reminds Oprah that working for others doesn't make her really successful and encourages her to start her own company.
In 1986, the two of them partnered to create the "Hapu Entertainment Group". And took her own talk show under the umbrella, and since then she has been the boss and host.
Since then, her interviewing career has become more lively, and Nicole Kidman has divorced and come to her to complain;
Nicole Kidman
Julia Roberts was pregnant and looked for her to show off her belly;
Julia roberts
Tom Cruise shows Barbie girlfriend Katie Holmes on her talk show;
Tom cruise
Even the unruly "bad boy" Sean Pan, who never put others in the eye, obediently recounted his failed marriage with Madonna in front of her.
Sean Penn
And the most notable one is the "Oprah Book Club", which has sold 47 books that she has selected.
However, when she boldly planned to enter the acting career, it was not so smooth.
She hopes that more works by people of color will be brought to the screen. She meticulously collected works by black writers, and in 1998 Morrison's Lover, starring and producing her, was released.
But the box office was dismal, with 23 million grossing less than half of the total investment.
This was arguably the most painful failure she had ever been able to succeed, when she was in a state of depression and she sensed that everyone around her was laughing at her.
But although the door to the film blueprint was closed, she was still "thriving" in television, and in the same year that "Lover" failed, she won the "Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences", when she was only 44 years old.
She works exceptionally hard and does everything herself. The Haup Group began publishing a magazine called o in 2020.
According to the editor-in-chief of the magazine,
"Oprah reads every word carefully and examines every picture thoroughly before the magazine goes to print. When there is no show, she stays in front of the computer in the office, and she can work from 3 p.m. on Monday to 8 p.m. on Thursday, and then all day on Friday, not even a single punctuation mark. ”
With this tenacity, Oprah is ranked first among black Billionaires in the United States for more than $1.4 billion; she has been named the most popular host in the United States for five consecutive times in the past 8 years; the University of Illinois has launched a course dedicated to this "American cultural phenomenon" marked by Oprah; and of course, she has also reached out to poor women, children and families through her own charities.
Vanity Fair magazine commented that "in popular culture, her influence may be greater than that of any university professor, politician or religious leader except the pope." ”
Even if her childhood is unbearable, even if she was rebellious and degenerate, she relied on the simple belief that "a person can be very poor, poor, and lowly, but he cannot have no dreams", and realized the beautiful transformation from ugly duckling to black swan.
Even if life is difficult and falls into a trough, even if there is no cure for despair and depravity.
As long as we are willing to change, we will eventually become the best version of ourselves.