comedian; actor; activist
Personal Information
Born Caryn E. Johnson in November 1955, in New York, NY; daughter of Emma Johnson (a nurse and teacher); married first husband, c. 1972 (divorced, c. 1974); married David Edward Claessen, September 1986 (divorced, 1988); married Lyle Trachtenberg 1994 (divorced 1995); children: (first marriage) Alexandrea Martin.
Career
Film, television, and theater actress and comedienne, 1985-; San Diego Repertory Theater and comedy group Spontaneous Combustion; worked as a bank teller, a bricklayer, and mortuary cosmetologist, 1974-late 1970s; member of the comedy troupe Blake Street Hawkeyes Theater; developed own one-woman show, late 1970s-85; host, The Whoopi Goldberg Show, 1992; Hollywood Squares, producer, talent; cohost for Comic Relief benefits. Television appearances include: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Bagdad Cafe, 1990. Guest television appearance: Moonlighting, among others; host, Academy Awards, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2002.
Life's Work
Whoopi Goldberg's life and career have followed similar circular journeys: both began with ingenuous hope then slipped dangerously toward extinction, only to be resurrected by a rediscovery of the dormant initial promise. Throughout her acting career, she has not forgotten the lessons she learned in her early, difficult life. There is, in a sense, no division between Whoopi Goldberg the actress and Whoopi Goldberg the person, as Paul Chutkow pointed out in Vogue: "She seems much the same way she has often appeared on-screen: fresh, direct, exuberant, no cant, no can't." Goldberg's unpretentiousness and determination imbue her best characterizations--they are direct and empathetic. She remained committed to her art. "Simply, I love the idea of working," she admitted to Aldore Collier in Jet. "You hone your craft that way." And she continued her committed to rectifying disparaging social conditions affecting the unfortunate, and to which she was once subjected. Her success was earned, and she offered no platitudes for its achievement, only a realistic vision: "Take the best of what you're offered," she told Chutkow, "and that's all you can do."
Born Caryn E. Johnson in New York City in 1955, Goldberg wanted to be a performer from the very beginning. "My first coherent thought was probably, I want to be an actor," she recounted to Chutkow. "I believe that. That's just what I was born to do." She was acting in children's plays with the Hudson Guild Theater at the age of eight and throughout the rest of her childhood immersed herself in movies, sometimes watching three or four a day. "I liked the idea that you could pretend to be somebody else and nobody would cart you off to the hospital," Goldberg explained to Cosmopolitan's Stephen Farber.
But by the time she reached high school, Goldberg had lost her desire and vision. It was the 1960s, and she was hooked on drugs. "I took drugs because they were available to everyone in those times," she told Farber. "As everyone evolved into LSD, so did I. It was the time of Woodstock, of be-ins and love-ins." Goldberg dropped out of high school and became lost in this culture, delving further into the world of drugs and ending up a junkie. Finally she sought help, cleaned herself up, and, in the process, married her drug counselor. A year later, Goldberg gave birth to her daughter, Alexandrea. Less than a year afterward, she was divorced. She was not yet twenty years old.
In 1974 Goldberg headed west to San Diego, California, pursuing her childhood dream of acting. She performed in plays with the San Diego Repertory Theater and tried improvisational comedy with a company called Spontaneous Combustion. To care for her daughter, Goldberg had to work as a bank teller, a bricklayer, and a mortuary cosmetologist. She was also, for a few years, on welfare. During this period, she went by the name "Whoopi Cushion," sometimes using the French pronunciation "Kushon." After her mother pointed out how ridiculous the name sounded, Goldberg finally adopted a name from her family's history.
Developed Insightful Comic Routine
In a significant step, Goldberg moved north to Berkeley, California, in the late 1970s and joined the Blake Street Hawkeyes Theater, a comedic avant-garde troupe. With this group, Goldberg was able to realize her powerful acting and comedic abilities, developing a repertoire of 17 distinct personae in a one-woman show that she labeled The Spook Show. She performed the show on the West Coast, then toured the country and Europe in the early 1980s before landing in New York City.
Among her sketches were four rueful--and sometimes sublime--characters: Fontaine, a profanity-spewing drug dealer with a Ph.D. in literature who travels to Europe looking for hashish, only to openly weep when he comes across Anne Frank's secret hiding place; a shallow thirteen-year-old surfing Valley Girl who is left barren after a self-inflicted abortion with a coat hanger; a severely handicapped young woman who tells her prospective suitor who wants to go dancing, "This is not a disco body;" and a nine-year-old black girl who bathes in Clorox and covers her head with a white skirt, wistfully hoping to become white with long blonde hair so she can appear on The Love Boat.
Although Brendan Gill of the New Yorker decided Goldberg's sketches were "diffuse and overlong and continuously at the mercy of her gaining a laugh at any cost," the majority of critical and popular reaction was positive. Cathleen McGuigan writing in Newsweek believed that Goldberg's "ability to completely disappear into a role, rather than superficially impersonate comic types, allows her to take some surprising risks." And Enid Nemy, in a review of Goldberg's show for the New York Times, found the performer's abilities extended beyond mere comic entertainment and that her creations--seamlessly woven with social commentary--"walk a finely balanced line between satire and pathos, stand-up comedy and serious acting." These realistic and ranging performances also caught the attention of famed film director Mike Nichols. After seeing Goldberg's premiere performance in New York, Nichols offered to produce her show on Broadway in September of 1984.
Film Debut Earned Critical Praise
Another Hollywood figure entranced by Goldberg's sensitive performances was director Steven Spielberg, who at the time was casting for the film production of author Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Spielberg offered Goldberg the lead role of Celie--her first major film appearance. Goldberg told Audrey Edwards of Essence how badly she wanted to be a part, any part, of the film: "I told [Alice Walker] that whenever there was an audition I'd come. I'd eat the dirt. I'd play the dirt, I'd be the dirt, because the part is perfect."
"As Celie, the abused child, battered bride, and wounded woman liberated by Shug's kiss and the recognition of sisterhood's power, Whoopi Goldberg is for the most part lovable and believable," Andrew Kopkind wrote in a review of the movie for the Nation. "She mugs a bit, pouts and postures too long in some scenes, and seems to disappear in others, but her great moments are exciting to behold." Newsweek's David Ansen concurred in assessing Goldberg's film debut: "This is powerhouse acting, all the more so because the rage and the exhilaration are held in reserve." For this performance, Goldberg received a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
But the film itself failed to receive the praise bestowed on Goldberg. "The movie is amorphous," Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker. "It's a pastoral about the triumph of the human spirit, and it blurs on you." Much criticism was aimed at the selection of Spielberg, a white male, to direct a story that focused on the Southern rural black experience, has a decidedly matriarchal point-of-view, and offers cardboard representations of its male characters. Even Goldberg herself was criticized when she defended Spielberg and the film. In an interview excerpted in Harper's, director Spike Lee questioned Goldberg's allegiances: "Does she realize what she is saying? Is she saying that a white person is the only person who can define our existence?... I hope people realize, that the media realize, that she's not a spokesperson for black people." Goldberg countered by defining for Matthew Modine in Interview the breadth of her social character: "What I am is a humanist before anything--before I'm a Jew, before I'm black, before I'm a woman. And my beliefs are for the human race--they don't exclude anyone."
Increased Exposure Allowed Social Activism
Despite the lukewarm reception to the film as a whole, Goldberg's fortunes rose. In addition to her awards for her film portrayal, she won a Grammy Award in 1985 for her comedy album Whoopi Goldberg and received an Emmy nomination the following year for her guest appearance on the television show Moonlighting. The increased exposure, recognition, and acceptance allowed Goldberg to pursue social activities focusing on issues that affected her when she required public assistance and that she has tried to call attention to since her early stand-up routines.
Beginning in 1986, Goldberg hosted, along with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, the annual Comic Relief benefit that raises money for the homeless through the Health Care for the Homeless project. "People would like the United States to be what we're told it can be, without realizing that the price has gone up--the price, you know, of human dignity," she explained to Steve Erickson in Rolling Stone. "Homelessness in America is just disgusting. It's just disgusting that we could have this big, beautiful country and have families living in dumpsters. It makes no sense." Her protests are not limited to this one social imbalance; Goldberg also campaigned on behalf of environmental causes, the nation's hungry, AIDS and drug abuse awareness, and women's right to free choice. She has been recognized with several humanitarian awards for her efforts.
Increased exposure, though, did not translate into increased success for Goldberg, as she went on to star in a succession of critically assailed movies: Jumpin' Jack Flash, Burglar, Fatal Beauty, The Telephone, Clara's Heart, and Homer and Eddie. It seemed that as soon as she had risen, she had fallen. "On the strength of her past work as a stand-up comic, Goldberg deserves better," Lawrence O'Toole wrote in a review of Burglar for Maclean's. "If she keeps making thumb-twiddling movies like this one, she is unlikely to get it." And in a review of Clara's Heart for People, David Hiltbrand noted that ever since her debut film, Goldberg "has barely kept her head above water while her movies went under. After this, she'll need her own lifeboat."
Goldberg was vexed by gossip and rumors that Hollywood was ready to write her off. "In less than five years she went from Hollywood's golden girl to a rumored lesbian/Uncle Tom with a bad attitude and a career on the skids," Laura B. Randolph described in Ebony. "In Hollywood, that combination is almost always terminal, and insiders whispered that she should pack it in and be happy to do guest spots on the Hollywood Squares." Ironically, Goldberg would resurrect Hollywood Squares years later.
Goldberg remained steady, though, disavowing critical displeasure. "I've just stopped listening to them," she explained to Chutkow. "I've taken crazy movies that appeal to me. I don't care what other people think about it. If it was pretty decent when I did it, I did my job." And that seems to be the tenuous thread that connects her box-office disappointments: her strong performance marred by poor direction or a poor final script. The New York Times's Janet Maslin, reviewing Fatal Beauty, wrote what could be taken as an overall assessment of Goldberg's failed showings: "It isn't Miss Goldberg's fault, because Miss Goldberg is funny when she's given half a chance."
Ghost Revived Career
Goldberg seemed simply to need the right vehicle to transport to the audience her comic approach underscored by biting social and tender humanitarian elements. Her chance came with the 1990 film Ghost. "Thank God Whoopi finally has a part that lets her strut her best stuff," Ansen proclaimed. Although some critics didn't fully embrace the film (the New Yorker's Terrance Rafferty called it a "twentysomething hybrid of It's a Wonderful Life and some of the gooier, more solemn episodes of The Twilight Zone"), most critical and popular response was overwhelmingly positive--especially to Goldberg's portrayal of the flamboyant yet heroic psychic, Oda Mae. It was a part for which she lobbied studio executives for more than six months, and her persistence paid off. Considered a sleeper when it was released, Ghost was the highest-grossing movie of 1990. And Goldberg won an Oscar for her performance, becoming only the second black female in the history of the Academy Awards to win such an honor--the first was Hattie McDaniel, who won for Gone with the Wind in 1939.
In a decisive indication of her acting range, Goldberg immediately followed her comedic role in Ghost with a substantive dramatic role in The Long Walk Home. The film is a poignant evocation of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955--a pivotal event in the American civil rights movement. Goldberg portrays Odessa Cotter, a housekeeper who, because of the boycott, is forced to walk almost ten miles to work, regardless of blistering or bleeding feet. Throughout, the character maintains her composure and integrity. Chutkow quoted Richard Pearce, the director of the film, on Goldberg's successful characterization: "What her portrayal of Odessa revealed about Whoopi was a complex inner life and intelligence. Her mouth is her usual weapon of choice--to disarm her of that easy weapon meant that she had to rely on other things. It's a real actress who can bring off a performance like that. And she did."
Goldberg also confirmed her far-reaching, unassailable talent in the arena of television. Beginning in the 1988-89 season, she earned accolades for appearing on a recurring basis as a crew member on the successful series Star Trek: The Next Generation. And while her 1990 stint in the series Bagdad Cafe was short-lived, Goldberg in 1992 secured the coveted position of late-night talk show host. The Whoopi Goldberg Show devoted each program to just one guest; Goldberg interviewed actress Elizabeth Taylor on the show's debut, and subsequent programs featured such celebrities as heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield.
The year 1992 also brought a series of successful film roles to Goldberg. She began the year portraying a homicide detective in director Robert Altman's highly anticipated and subsequently acclaimed Hollywood satire The Player. In midyear Goldberg donned a nun's habit as a Reno lounge singer seeking refuge from the mob in a convent in the escapist comedy Sister Act, one of the biggest box-office draws of the summer of 1992. The film, according to Detroit Free Press film critic Judy Gerstel, worked "as summer whimsy mainly because of Goldberg's usual witty, lusty screen presence." And in the fall she turned again to a dramatic role, starring in Sarafina: The Movie, a film adaptation of the musical about Black South African teenagers' struggle against apartheid. Sarafina was shot entirely on location in Soweto, South Africa.
Goldberg's constant quest for a range of roles--what led Maslin to label her "one of the great unclassifiable beings on the current movie scene"--is not the mark of a Hollywood prima donna but of an actor committed to her craft. "None of my films cure cancer," Goldberg explained to Chutkow. "But they have allowed me to not just play one kind of person, which is important to me. Nobody knows how long this stuff is gonna last, and you want to have it and enjoy as much of it and be as diverse as you can."
Roast Caused Conflict
Goldberg was the honoree at a Friars Club roast in 1993. Her then-boyfriend, Ted Danson, performed a racy skit in blackface that included the N-word and jokes about the couple's sexual lives. Many in attendance were outraged and talk show host, Montel Williams, walked out during the performance. Many editorials were written concerning the affair and the media was relentless in its coverage. Members of the National Political Congress of Black Women sent a letter, which was quoted in Jet, to the Friars Club, stating "The use of the most vile, profane, deprecating language in describing African Americans in general and African-American women in particular is patently wrong." The couple split soon after.
In 1994 Goldberg married once again, to union organizer Lyle Trachtenberg, whom she met on the set of Corrina Corrina, a film in which she played a housekeeper who wins the heart of a widower and his child. The couple divorced a year later, after which Goldberg entered into a five-year relationship with actor, Frank Langella, who co-starred with her in Eddie. During the following years, Goldberg starred in a number of films that displayed her diverse acting abilities. In 1996 she starred in The Associate, a comedy where Goldberg plays a brilliant financial analyst who is passed over for a promotion. For revenge, she dresses as a man, and starts her own business. In Ghosts of Mississippi (1997) Goldberg played the widow of the slain Medger Evers. For a short time, Goldberg strayed from Hollywood and returned to the stage where she took over Nathan Lane's character in the play, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.
For the remainder of the 1990s, Goldberg starred in and played small parts in several made-for-television movies and films, numerous television shows, and her characteristic voice was used for several characters in some animated films. She has also taken part in many tributes to other performers and movers and shakers in Hollywood. After ten years of staying put Goldberg went on tour during the summer of 2001. Goldberg said, "I don't generally get out a lot because I'm going through the change."
Whoopi, a pioneer and somewhat of a maverick, broke more boundaries when she emceed the 66th Academy Awards, in 1994. She was the first African American to host the award ceremony, and the first solo female to host the awards. That year, The Academy Awards was the highest rated show of the season. She was invited to host the Academy Awards in 1996, 1999, and again in 2002. Goldberg remained passionate about portraying real people and telling real stories. She established her own production company, One Ho Productions. The company helped bring back the popular Hollywood Squares with Tom Bergeron as host and Goldberg in the center square. In 2001 she bought the film rights to the book, Destined To Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, which is based on the memoirs of Hans J. Massoqoui, who was the former managing editor of Ebony magazine. Goldberg said, "It's a story that needs to be told. People don't realize that during the course of the 30s and 40s in Germany, there wee a lot of Black people trying to survive and not making it." According to Jet, this novel "marks the first time in literature that the experiences and ultimate survival of a Black youth growing up in Nazi Germany have been chronicled."
In 2003, Goldberg returned to regular television work when she launched in her own sitcom, the self-titled Whoopi. Intended to be a multi-cultural New York City sitcom to rival the less-than-diverse previously popular sitcoms Friends and Seinfeld, Goldberg led the cast as Mavis Rae, a hotel matron who was once a one-hit-wonder. Mavis Rae's conservative brother, his white girlfriend who acts black, and a Persian handyman who is agitated by being lumped together with Arabs rounded out the cast. The show was designed to showcase social commentary mixed with comedy, and it tackled topics including gay marriage, racism, and terrorism. After receiving mixed reviews and losing many viewers by the end of its first season, NBC decided not to bring it back for a second year. Speaking with Liz Smith in an interview for Good Housekeeping, Goldberg said, "I really am disappointed. I thought we had a good show. But I'll find something else. Television is growing and stretching. There's a lot more flexibility than the movies in terms of what can be done. I do want to keep making films."
Along with continuing to make films (Goldberg voiced characters for four movies between 2003 and 2005, as well as performing in the fantasy Jimmy Glick in La La Wood and The Spook Show with a return to her original Broadway stage. Featuring many of the same characters as the original one-woman show, the newly titled Whoopi Goldberg: Back to Broadway brought Fontaine and others back to life, as well as introducing audiences to new creations like the middle-aged, overweight Lurlene who is obsessed with her body and a fan of Law and Order"" so devoted he calls himself an Ordery. Though Goldberg's return to Broadway also garnered mixed returns, critics noted the success of some return characters, such as Fontaine, who is, according to Michael Kuchwara's review featured in America's Intelligence Wire, "The toughest--and funniest--social critic around." When asked by Mark Kennedy, also in America's Intelligence Wire, if she would be returning to the stage for a fortieth anniversary show in another twenty years, Goldberg moaned in response, "I'd have to keep doing Pilates all the way until then!"
Awards
Golden Globe Award for best actress in a dramatic role, Academy Award nomination for best actress, both for The Color Purple, 1985; Image Award, NAACP, 1985, 1990; Grammy Award for best comedy recording, for Whoopi Goldberg, 1985; Emmy Award nomination, for guest appearance on Moonlighting, 1986; Academy Award for best supporting actress, for Ghost, 1991; Emmy Award nomination, outstanding guest actress in a comedy series, 1991, for "If I Should Die before I Wake," A Different World; Golden Globe Award nomination, best performance by an actress in a motion picture-comedy or musical, 1993, for Sister Act; Emmy Award nomination, 1996; Daytime Emmy Award nomination (with others), outstanding audience participation show/game show, 1999, for Hollywood Squares; Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, July 20, 2001; Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, 2001; Tony Award, 2002, for Thoroughly Modern Millie; Muse Award, 2003.
Works
Selected works
- Books
- Alice (for children), Bantam, 1992.
- Albums
- Whoopi Goldberg, Geffen, 1985.
- (With others) The Best of Comic Relief, Rhino, 1986.
- (With others) The Best of Comic Relief 2, Rhino, 1988.
- (With others) The Best of Comic Relief 3, Rhino, 1989.
- (With others) The Best of Comic Relief '90, Rhino, 1990.
- Films
- The Color Purple, 1985.
- Jumpin' Jack Flash, 1986.
- Burglar, 1987.
- Fatal Beauty, 1987.
- The Telephone, 1988.
- Clara's Heart, 1988.
- Homer and Eddie, 1989.
- Ghost, 1990.
- The Long Walk Home, 1990.
- Soapdish, 1991.
- The Player, 1992.
- Sister Act, 1992.
- Sarafina: The Movie, 1992.
- Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, 1993.
- Boys On The Side, 1995.
- Corrina, Corrina, 1994.
- The Lion King (voice only), 1994.
- Ghosts of Mississippi, 1997.
- How Stella Got Her Groove Back, 1998.
- The Rugrats Movie, (voice only), 1998.
- Girl, Interrupted, 1999.
- Kingdom Come, 2001.
- Call Me Claus, (TNT Original), 2001.
- Monkeybone,2001.
- Rat Race,2001.
- Golden Dreams,2001.
- Star Trek: Nemesis,2002.
- Blizzard (voice only), 2003.
- Lion King 1.5(voice only), 2004.
- Pinocchio 3000(voice only), 2004.
- Jimmy Glick in La La Wood,2004.
- Racing Stripes(voice only), 2005.
Further Reading
- America's Intelligence Wire, November 18, 2004; November 19, 2004.
- Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 1986.
- Cosmopolitan, December 1988; March 1991; April 1992.
- Detroit Free Press, May 29, 1992.
- Ebony, March 1991.
- Entertainment Weekly, April 2, 1999, p. 36.
- Essence, March 1985.
- Good Housekeeping, September 2004.
- Harper's, January 1987.
- Interview, June 1992; October, 1999, p. 126.
- Jet, April 24, 1989; August 13, 1990; April 22, 1991; January 13, 1992; June 1, 1992; November 1, 1993, p. 56; October 27, 1997, p. 64; April 23, 2001, p. 64.
- Maclean's, April 6, 1987.
- Nation, February 1, 1986; December 10, 1990.
- New Republic, January 27, 1986.
- New Statesman, August 23, 1991.
- Newsweek, March 5, 1984; December 30, 1985; October 20, 1986; July 16, 1990.
- New York, December 12, 1988; April 2, 1990.
- New Yorker, November 5, 1984; December 30, 1985; July 30, 1990.
- New York Times, October 21, 1984; October 30, 1987; February 14, 1988; February 9, 1990.
- Parade, November 1, 1992.
- People, October 17, 1988; April 2, 1990.
- Rolling Stone, May 8, 1986; August 9, 1990.
- Time, December 17, 1990; June 1, 1992.
- Variety, March 13, 2000, p. 51; December 10, 2000, p. 26.
- Vogue, January 1991.
— Rob Nagel and Christine Miner Minderovic
