She started alone on a stage with nothing but characters in her head, and became one of the few performers to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Whoopi Goldberg did it her way.
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Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City on 13 November 1955. She began acting in theatre and created a one-woman show, in which she played a series of different characters, a performance that brought her to wider attention in the early 1980s.
Her film breakthrough came as Celie in The Color Purple in 1985, a performance of extraordinary tenderness. She followed it with comedy, including Jumpin’ Jack Flash in 1986, and then with Ghost in 1990, as Oda Mae Brown, and the Sister Act films in 1992 and 1993, as Deloris Van Cartier, a lounge singer hiding in a convent.
She also became a familiar television presence, including as Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a role she played from 1988, and later as a co-host of the daytime talk show The View. Over her career she has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, making her one of the small group of performers known as EGOT winners.
Goldberg’s career is a story of range: drama, comedy, music, stage and screen, all held together by a voice and a presence that audiences recognise instantly.