Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955), known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg, is an American actress, comedian, author, and television host. She has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards for her work in television and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. She was the second black woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win an acting Oscar.
In the period drama film The Color Purple (1985), her breakthrough role was playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe. In the romantic fantasy film Ghost (1990), Goldberg played Oda Mae Brown, an eccentric psychic who helped a slain man (Patrick Swayze) save his lover (Demi Moore), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and a second Golden Globe, her first for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1992, she starred as a pretend nun in the comedy Sister Act, earning a third Golden Globe nomination, her first for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and reprised the role in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). Her other film roles include Made in America (1993), The Lion King (1994), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), Girl, Interrupted (1999), For Colored Girls (2010) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). In television, Goldberg is known for her role as Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and since 2007, she has been the moderator of the daytime television talk show The View.
She was born Caryn Elaine Johnson and raised with her brother Clyde by her mother in a housing project in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, New York. She began acting at the age of 8 in children’s plays with the Hudson Guild Theatre. By the late 1960s she dropped out of the NY School for the Performing Arts to become a hippie. She also worked in choruses with various musicals. Johnson married, had a daughter, and developed a heroin habit. In the 1970s she divorced, kicked her drug habit, and moved to southern California.
In San Diego, she became one of the founding members of the San Diego Repertory Theatre. She also worked with an improv theatre group called Spontaneous Combustion. It was during this time that Johnson changed her name to Whoopi Goldberg. She had moved to Berkeley in the late 1970s and begun performing with the Blake Street Hawkeyes Theater. She also worked as a bricklayer, a bank teller, and a mortuary cosmetologist. It was in Berkeley that she began performing monologues that would become The Spook Show. It toured Europe and the United States and performed in New York City as part of the New York Dance Theatre Workshop in 1983.
It was here that Goldberg caught the eye of stage and screen director Mike Nichols. He helped Goldberg put together a one-woman show for Broadway which actually began in Berkeley. Called Moms, the one-woman play was
co-written by Goldberg and Ellen Sebastian. In 1984, she returned to New York to perform The Spook Show now renamed Whoopi Goldberg.
In 1986, Goldberg, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams began hosting Comic Relief to raise money for the home” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” In addition to her film, stage, and television work, Goldberg has also written a children’s book, “Alice,” and an autobiography titled “Book.” Goldberg has gone on to star in numerous films including “The Color Purple,” one of her signature cinematic performances. In 1988, Goldberg also performed in “Clara’s Heart.”
Her attempt at sitcoms failed with the short-lived series Baghdad Cafe, but she did find greater television ” Around the same time, Goldbergs won acclaim for “The Long Walk Home” (1989), and then played an eccentric con artist possessing unexpected psychic powers in the 1990 smash hit “Ghost.” Goldberg’s funny yet moving performance earned her her first Oscar and the widespread opinion that this marked her comeback performance. The award made her only the second African American woman to win an Oscar. After a couple of missteps, Goldberg scored again with the 1992 hit comedy “Sister Act.” Nominated for Golden Globes and two NAACP awards, the film spawned mass ticket sales and an unsuccessful 1993 sequel, “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.”
Meanwhile, Goldberg also continued her television work with a 1992 late night talk show, A laid back affair, it was praised by critics but failed to secure high ratings and went on permanent hiatus after only six months. However, Goldberg continued to appear on TV with her recurring role as a Comic Relief co-host and as an MC for the Academy Awards ceremony, a role she reprised multiple times. At the same time, Goldberg continued to work in film, doing both comedy and drama and experiencing the obligatory highs and lows.
Some of her more memorable roles included “Made in America” (1993), “Boys on the Side” (1995), “The Associate” (1996), “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998), and “The Deep End of the Ocean” (1999). In addition, Goldberg also appeared in two notable documentaries, “The Celluloid Closet” (1995), and “Get Bruce!”
She is one of only thirteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. In 1990, she became the second African-American female performer after Hattie McDaniel to win an Academy Award for acting. Goldberg has appeared in over 150 films, and in 1999, she received the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Vanguard Award for her continued work in supporting the gay and lesbian community. She has been nominated for five American Comedy Awards with two wins. In 2001, she won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. She also hosted the Oscars in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002. Goldberg wrote Book in October 1997, a collection of stories from her past and opinions. She is a strong supporter of abortion rights.
Goldberg appeared in TV ads as a spokeswoman for Slim Fast diet shakes, but the company dropped her in July 2004 after she made crude comments about President George W. Bush’s last name during a Democratic fund-raiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. For the 2006 PBS program African American Lives, she had her DNA analyzed, and discovered that she is likely descended from the Pepel and Bayote people of Guinea-Bissau. In May 2006, Clear Channel announced that Whoopi Goldberg would be hosting her own syndicated radio show titled Wake Up with Whoopi in 2006. She has also been a co-host for the daytime TV show The View.
Goldberg is co-founder of Whoopi & Maya, a company that makes medical marijuana products for women seeking relief from menstrual cramps. Goldberg says she was inspired to go into business by “a lifetime of difficult periods and the fact that cannabis was literally the only thing that gave me relief”. The company was launched in April 2016.