Goldberg, Whoopi

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Goldberg, Whoopi

November 13, 1950

Actress Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Johnson in New York City and raised in a housing project by her mother. She received her earliest education at a parish school, the Congregation of Notre Dame. She gained her first stage experience at the Helena Rubinstein Children's Theatre at the Hudson Guild, where she acted in plays from the age of eight to ten.

In the mid-1960s Goldberg dropped out of high school and worked on Broadway as a chorus member in the musicals Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Pippin. She was married briefly in the early 1970s and had a daughter from the marriage, Alexandrea Martin.

In 1974 Goldberg moved to Los Angeles and has since maintained California residence. She became a founding member of the San Diego Repertory Theatre and later joined Spontaneous Combustion, an improvisation group. It was about this time that she adopted the name Whoopi Goldberg.

In 1981 Goldberg, with David Schein, wrote the extended comedy sketch The Last Word. The eclectic ensemble of characters in her sketches includes a self-aborting surfer girl, a panhandling ex-vaudevillian, a junkie, and a Jamaican maid. Goldberg's style, a blend of social commentary, humor, and improvisation, earned her both critical acclaim and a large audience. In 1983 she developed an hour-long piece entitled The Spook Show, which played in London and New York to great acclaim. After appearing in Berkeley, California, in a one-woman show called Moms, based on the life of comedian Moms Mabley, Goldberg opened on Broadway in 1984 in a new version of her comedy sketches, Whoopi Goldberg, produced by Mike Nichols.

The following year Goldberg starred as Celie in Steven Spielberg's film of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. She received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, which propelled her into the Hollywood mainstream. She subsequently starred in such films as Jumping Jack Flash (1986), Burglar (1987), Fatal Beauty (1987),

Clara's Heart (1988), and The Long Walk Home (1990). She appeared in a continuing role on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1988 through 1993. In 1990 she received an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role as a psychic in Ghost. Goldberg became only the second black woman—the first since Hattie McDaniel in 1939—to win an Oscar in a major category. Subsequently she appeared in Soapdish (1991), Sister Act (1992), and Sarafina! (1992), becoming the first African-American to star in a film shot on location in South Africa.

In 1992 Goldberg cofounded the annual comedy benefit "Comic Relief" on the cable television network Home Box Office to raise money for the homeless. That same year she launched her own syndicated television talk show. In 1993 Goldberg appeared in the films Sister Act 2 and Made In America, a comedy about an interracial relationship. In 1994, Goldberg hosted the Oscar Awards. Her subsequent film appearances include The Player (1995), Boys on the Side (1996), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), The Ghosts of Mississippi (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), and Kingdom Come (2001). In 1997, following a short-lived late-night talk show, The Whoopi Goldberg Show, she returned to Broadway in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In 1998 she revived the television quiz show "Hollywood Squares" as a starring vehicle. Her career in television continued in 2003, when she launched a sitcom titled Whoopi, and she returned to the stage once again in 2004, reviving her original one-woman Broadway show with Whoopi: The 20th Year.