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Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg

She is a talented actress, director, author and TV host, winner of many prestigious awards and prizes, including several Oscars and Golden Globes, woman with a huge sense of humor. Throughout three decades there was no year when the cinema world would not be supplied with cinematographic masterpieces, in which she participated. She is a smart speaker and just a lovable woman for many millions of spectators, including me. All of that is Whoopi Goldberg! My collection would not be complete without an autograph of this immeasurably gifted and many-faceted woman. I present to Your attention some landmarks from the life of this outstanding and legendary woman.

Whoopi Goldberg (true name — Caryn Elaine Johnson, born on November 13, 1955) — is an American theater and move actress, producer, screenplay writer and TV host. She was one of the most prominent Hollywood stars of 1980s-1990s.

She was born on November 13 of 1955, in New York’s Chelsea district, populated mostly by immigrants, in a poor family. Her nickname “Whoopi” (from «whoopee cushion»), which she later used as her actor’s pseudonym, Caryn received in her childhood.

Since she was eight, she started to perform in an experimental children theater of Helen Rubenstein, where she gained her first stage experience and the only lessons of acting art in her whole life. The teachers highly appreciated the girl’s early fledging talent.

Caryn did not receive adequate basic education: for a few years she was among those lagging behind and then she was forced to drop out of school because of her difficulties with mastering reading and writing skills caused by dyslexia.

In the end of 1960s, Caryn joined the hippie movement. She left her house to live in a commune where she got addicted to marihuana and, later, to heavier drugs. For a long time, she did not work anywhere and existed on unemployment support.

She tried to get rid of her addiction more than once, but to no avail, until in the beginning of 1970s, she met Alvin Martin, who was an activist of the organization “Against Drugs.” Alvin persuaded her that it was necessary to change her life and helped her to come off the drugs. Soon they married, and one year later Caryn gave birth to their daughter – Alexandrea.

Caryn worked as a night guard, she laid bricks, put makeup on dead people at a mortuary, until, at last, in 1974, through one of theater agencies she was lucky to find an actress vacancy in a new theater in San Diego. Alvin refused to leave New York, and they had to part: together with her daughter, Caryn moved to the West Coast.

She started her theatrical career under the pseudonym Whoopi Goldberg. In San Diego she participated in the creation of a city theater under the name “Repertory Theater,” then she left it for the “Black Street Theater” in San Francisco. She played in several amateur troupes.

One of her first works was a leading part in the play “Mother Courage.” After one evening show, where she had to play both the main character and also substitute for one of the actors who was sick, she conceived the idea of a mono-spectacle, in which she would play six roles – from a beggar to a female millionaire.

This project, realized in 1983 under the name “The Spook Show” had a great success. Whoopi not only toured America with it, but Canada and Europe as well. The show attracted the attention of producer Mike Nichols, who helped Whoopi to set a show on Broadway in 1984. There she received several invitations to a number of shows; in particular, she participated in the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

In the years to come, movie career virtually did not leave any time for her theater performances, still, some of her works are well-known; in particular, she acted in a melodrama “Love Letters” in duet with T. Dalton.

In 1985, when she heard that preparations were made to screen an epic novel of Alice Walker “The Colour Purple” (which was acknowledged as the African American analogue of “Gone with the Wind”), Whoopi sent a letter to the author with a request to invite her to play in this movie. Alice Walker, who was already familiar with Whoopi’s theater works, spoke to the film director Steven Spielberg about this proposal and the actress received the main role of Celie Johnson, a black American woman, who is evolving spiritually throughout the narrative from a timid housewife to an independently thinking woman of strong will. Whoopi Goldberg’s striking movie debut was awarded with the Golden Globe prize and a nomination for “Oscar.”

Starting with a deeply dramatic role, Whoopi Goldberg continued her career in the movie industry mostly in entertaining genres: comedies, criminal comedies, detectives, television series and science fiction. Among the best known films with her participation are: “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Burglar,” “Fatal Beauty,” “Sister Act,” “Ghost,” “A Knight in Camelot,” et cetera. The line of an appealing, eccentric character, an independent woman, who cares not a bit for any conventional concepts, stuck to her, to which effect her own daily cultivated image contributed greatly. At the same time, her dramatic movie works are also well known; for example in such movies as “Ghosts of Mississippi,” “The Long Walk Home,” in Andrei Konchalovsky’s movie “Homer and Eddie,” which won her the Grand Prix of the International Film Festival in San Sebastian.

In 1991, Whoopi Goldberg received the Academy Award (“Oscar”) as the best supporting actress – psychic Oda Mae Brown in Gerry Zucker’s “Ghost.” At the Cannes Film Festival of 1992, great interest was aroused by films “Sarafina!” where Whoopi Goldberg starred, and “The Player” of Robert Altman – sharp satire on the Hollywood’s ways of life.

Whoopi Goldberg also participated in voicing cartoons and read the narrator’s text in non-fiction films.

Alongside with her movie works, Whoopi Goldberg won television terrains. She was a constant participant in a humour show “Comic Relief” for several years, and hosted her own talk-show.

For several seasons she acted in a fantastic television series “Star Trek,” appeared in several other series as an invited artist (detective agency “Moonlight;” season 2, episode 18).

In 1994, Whoopi Goldberg debuted as a front-lady of the Academy Awards ceremony; since that time she enjoyed a grandiose success as a host of different ceremonies.

Whoopi Goldberg has been married three times officially: to Alvin Martin, the father of her only daughter Alexandrea (1970s), photographer David Claessen (1988—1990) and to businessman Michael Trachtenberg (1994—1995).

She is also linked to several common law marriages and romances – mostly, with Hollywood actors and other cinematographic figures: Frank Langella, Ted Danson, Timothy Dalton, and Eddie Gold.

Whoopi Goldberg is not hiding her radical social beliefs, openly criticizing conservative actions of US administration and those of the Republican Party, speaking for the equality of cultures and religions, for legalization of same-sex marriages. In 1998, she published a book under the title “The Book,” where in her characteristic manner she is mocking the bigotry of the modern society concealed under the mask of political correctness.

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