Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media personality, actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show (The Oprah Winfrey Show), which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African Americans of all time, and was once the worlds only black billionaire (Black billionaires).cite web title = #562 Oprah Winfrey work = Forbes Special Report: The Worlds Billionaires (2006) publisher = Forbes url = year = 2006 month = October accessdate = August 25, 2008 cite web last = Usborne first = David title = Oprahs �20m school proves shes not all talk publisher = Independent News and Media date = January 3, 2007 url = accessdate = March 4, 2007 She is also, according to some assessments (Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century#The only people to shape both the 20th century and the early 21st), the most influential woman in the world.cite web last = Meldrum Henley-on-Klip first = Andrew title = Their story is my story Oprah opens $40m school for South African girls publisher = Guardian Unlimited date = January 3, 2007 url = accessdate = March 4, 2007

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city (inner city) Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated (broadcast syndication#Radio syndication).

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale (Yale University) study claims broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. In 2006 she became an early supporter of Barack Obama and one analysis estimates she delivered over a million votes (Oprah Winfreys endorsement of Barack Obama) in the close 2008 Democratic primary race, an achievement for which the governor of Illinois considered offering her a seat (Proposed naming of Oprah Winfrey to Barack Obamas senate seat) in the U.S. senate.