Whoopi Goldberg

Caryn Elaine Johnson, known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg, is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality. She is one of 28 entertainers to receive an EGOT, having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. Her additional accolades include a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globes, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and the Disney Legend Award. She has hosted the Academy Awards four times and has served as a co-host and moderator of the daytime talk show The View since 2007.

Goldberg was born on November 13, 1955, in Manhattan, New York City, to Emma Johnson, a nurse and teacher, and Robert James Johnson Jr., a Baptist clergyman. Raised Catholic by her mother alongside her brother Clyde in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses housing project, she attended St. Columba's parochial school before dropping out of Washington Irving High School. In the 1970s, she moved to California, working jobs as a bank teller, mortuary cosmetologist, and bricklayer, while teaching acting classes and performing with the avant-garde theater troupe Blake Street Hawkeyes.

She trained under acting teacher Uta Hagen at the HB Studio in New York City and made her onscreen debut in the 1982 feature Citizen: I'm Not Losing My Mind, I'm Giving It Away. Goldberg gained national prominence with her one-woman stage shows, including Moms and The Spook Show, which transferred to Broadway in 1984 under the title Whoopi Goldberg with assistance from director Mike Nichols. The taped HBO recording won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. In 1985, she starred as Celie in Steven Spielberg's period drama The Color Purple, earning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and an Academy Award nomination.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Goldberg starred in films such as Jumpin' Jack Flash, Clara's Heart, and The Long Walk Home, while playing the recurring role of Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Her portrayal of an eccentric psychic in Ghost (1990) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the second African-American woman to win an acting Oscar. She subsequently starred in the successful comedies Sister Act (1992) and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), becoming the highest-paid actress at the time, and voiced a hyena in the animated feature The Lion King (1994).

Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, Goldberg took roles in films like Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race, while expanding into television executive production. She returned to Broadway in revivals of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. In 2002, she completed the EGOT by winning a Daytime Emmy Award as a producer of Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel and a Tony Award for Best Musical for producing Thoroughly Modern Millie.

On television, Goldberg won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host for her work on The View. She has continued to act across multiple mediums, producing and performing in the stage adaptation of Sister Act, voicing a character in Toy Story 3, appearing in the drama Till, reprising her role as Guinan in Star Trek: Picard, and playing Miss Hannigan in a revival of Annie.