Oprah Winfrey’s Net Worth
Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host, producer, actress, and media proprietor from Kosciusko. Winfrey is mostly known for her successful talk show ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. The show is the highest-rated television program in history.
Oprah’s net worth is $3.5 billion. Today she earns around $315 million per year thanks to her highly lucrative diversified media empire.
Oprah Winfrey is also known as the ‘Queen of Media’ and she has collaborated with some of the most successful stars in the world including TV host Ellen Degeneres who also is a popular host in the industry.
History
Oprah Winfrey rose from poverty, abuse, and prejudice to become one of the most influential people on the planet. She was born Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954. That was not a misspelling. Her given name was “Orpah,” a reference to the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth.
As a baby people regularly mispronounced the name as “Oprah” which eventually stuck. She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was an unmarried teenage housemaid. Her biological father, Vernon Winfrey, was in the Armed Forces at the time of Oprah’s birth.
He eventually worked as a barber, coal miner, and city councilman. It has been rumored that her biological father might have been another man named Noah Robinson.
Oprah and her mother moved in with her grandmother when Oprah was a baby. The family lived in abject poverty, with Oprah famously being forced to wear potato sacks as school dresses. So she literally rose from rags to riches.
When she was six, Oprah and her mother moved to Milwaukee where her mother got a job as a maid. During this period, Oprah’s mother gave birth to a second daughter named Patricia. In 2003 Patricia died from cocaine abuse at the age of 43. Another half-sibling, a brother named Jeffrey born to father Vernon, died in 1989 from AIDS.
When Oprah was 12, she was sent to live with her father Vernon in Nashville. At 13 she ran away from home to escape the abuse she experienced there. At 14 she became pregnant with a son who was born premature and died.
She initially attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee but after excelling in a special program eared a transfer to an affluent suburban school called Nicolet High School. After getting into some trouble she went back to living in Nashville. At East Nashville High School she started to blossom. At 17, Oprah won a Miss Black Beauty Tennessee pageant which led to a part-time job at a local black radio station called WVOL working as a news anchor.
She earned a scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she studied communication. At 19, Oprah left school to pursue a career in media full-time.
Oprah’s profile
| Net Worth: | $3.5 Billion |
| Salary: | $300 Million Per Year |
| Date of Birth: | Jan 29, 1954 (68 years old) |
| Gender: | Female |
| Height: | 5 ft 6 in (1.69 m) |
| Profession: | Media proprietor, Actor, Presenter, Businessperson, Television producer, Film Producer, Journalist, Philanthropist, Voice Actor |
| Nationality: | United States of America |
Career
Oprah’s big breakthrough came in 1986 when she began her own television show ‘The Oprah Winfrey show’.
The show has proved to be one of the most successful and highly watched TV shows of all time. Oprah has also, during her career, remained a powerful role model for women and black American women in particular.
The Oprah Winfrey Show has focused on spirituality, issues of self-improvement, and self-help. Diet was once a big issue with Oprah, and she has successfully lost a lot of weight. Oprah’s diet book has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Her books have focused a lot on spiritual topics, and the aspect of taking responsibility for your own life. Oprah means that it’s not good enough to just change your circumstances but you also need to change the way you look at your life.
Her Shows
Winfrey launched The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 as a nationally syndicated program that ran for 25 years, until 2011. With its placement on 120 channels and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the end of its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million.
She soon gained ownership of the program from ABC, drawing it under the control of her new production company, Harpo Productions (‘Oprah’ spelled backwards) and making more and more money from syndication.
In 1994, with talk shows becoming increasingly trashy and exploitative, Winfrey pledged to keep her show free of tabloid topics. Although ratings initially fell, she earned the respect of her viewers and was soon rewarded with an upsurge in popularity.
Projects with Harpo have included the highly-rated 1989 TV miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place, in which Winfrey also starred.
In 2004, Winfrey signed a new contract to continue The Oprah Winfrey Show through the 2010-11 season. At the time, the syndicated show was seen on nearly 212 U.S. stations and in more than 100 countries worldwide.
In 2009, Winfrey announced that she would be ending her program when her contract with ABC ended, in 2011.
Endorsements
Oprah has been a board member of Weight Watchers since 2015. When she was brought on to the company, she was awarded $43.5 million worth of equity. That stake has grown to be worth more than $400 million. In 2019 she signed a multi-year deal with Apple to produce shows for the tech giant.
As an actress, Oprah has appeared in a number of major films including 1985’s “The Color Purple,” 1998’s “Beloved,” 2013’s “The Butler,” and 2014’s “Selma.”
She has produced dozens of television shows, documentaries, and miniseries.
As of this writing, Oprah has been nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actress for “The Color Purple” and another as a producer for Best Picture for “Selma.” In 2011 she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award.
Oprah has won 18 Daytime Emmy Awards (out of 26 nominations), one Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmys, and a Tony Award.
