Versatile stand-up comedienne and performance artist Whoopi Goldberg gained the attention of Hollywood with her eponymous 1984 Broadway show of character sketches, directed by Mike Nichols. Her trademark dreadlocks, gravelly voice and blunt, hip yet compassionate style made her unconventional star material to be sure, and the ups and downs of her career clearly represent the attempts of producers to smooth over what they consider to be her "rough edges." She made an auspicious feature debut with an atypically subdued but very moving performance in Steven Spielberg's controversial "The Color Purple" (1985), but subsequently her energetic presence was underutilized in a series of mostly uninspired vehicles (e.g., "Burglar" and "Fatal Beauty", both 1987) prior to her Oscar-winning portrayal of a fake psychic medium in the 1990 boxoffice hit "Ghost".
Things were not all bad for this unique actress during the second half of the 80s before "Ghost", with "Jumping Jack Flash" (1986) and "Clara's Heart" (1988) having their fair share of ardent admirers. Goldberg became a seemingly ubiquitous presence on TV, racking up over 80 appearances in specials (most notably HBO's "Comic Relief" and its follow-ups), several memorable guest spots (including a 1986 Emmy-nominated turn on ABC's "Moonlighting"), in addition to a stint co-starring with Jean Stapleton on "Bagdad Cafe" (1990-91), a short-lived CBS comedy series based on the 1987 feature film of the same name. Goldberg played a likable if rather modest recurring role as Guinan, the enigmatic alien bartender, on the hit syndicated series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1988-94), reprising the role in the feature "Star Trek: Generations" (1994), and also produced several specials for cable and syndication.
Her feature career enlivened by "Ghost", Goldberg went on to a dignified dramatic role in the pre-civil rights 50s era film "The Long Walk Home" (1990) and a comic part in "Soapdish" (1991) before starring in the surprise blockbuster comedy of 1992, "Sister Act", which grossed more than $300 million worldwide. She ended 1992 with a strong supporting role as a cop in Robert Altman's "The Player" and the lead in "Sarafina!". Goldberg also began hosting her own late night one-on-one chat show, "The Whoopi Goldberg Show" (syndicated, 1992-93). Though the informal show featured major stars, Goldberg was more of a gushy friend than a probing interviewer, and lackluster ratings led to a quick cancellation. She returned to films with "Made in America" (1993), a comedy co-starring Ted Danson, and the inevitable sequel, "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit" (also 1993).
Far from making her difficult to cast, Goldberg's unusual and considerable talents and her earthy, straightforward persona have kept her extremely busy, from hosting three Academy Awards ceremonies to performing in the low-key romance "Corinna, Corinna", voicing Shenzi the hyena in "The Lion King" (both 1994) or playing a lesbian in the road film "Boys on the Side" (1995). She was all-but-inescapable in 1996, prompting her to quip in 1997 that most of her 30 movies were "released last year." She starred in the passable comedy "Eddie", as an ardent basketball fan who wins the chance to coach her favorite team; the whimsical misfire "Bogus", about an orphaned boy who creates an imaginary friend to help him cope with his mother's death; "The Associate", a remake of a 1979 French/West German comedy, portraying an investment banker who furthers her career by employing male drag and "whiteface" to personify a fictional white male CEO; and Rob Reiner's "Ghosts of Mississippi", a return to civil rights era drama, as Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of slain NAACP officer Medgar Evers.
Perhaps watching those four movies rack up disappointing to outright disastrous grosses made Goldberg hungry for a change, and she returned to the Broadway stage, replacing Nathan Lane in a gender-switching turn as Pseudolus in the revival of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", her first attempt at a book musical. Never mind that the show's leering combination of vaudeville and Plautus presented a somewhat dated attitude toward women, Goldberg made the role (originated by the great Zero Mostel) her own, identifying particularly with the Roman slave's thirst for freedom. After appearing as herself in two 1997 features ("Burn, Hollywood, Burn" and "In & Out"), she played Delilah, a woman dying of cancer in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (1998) and a gay detective in "The Deep End of the Ocean" (1999). For the former, her death scene was touching but in a way extraneous to the adaptation by Ron Bass and Terry McMillan of McMillan's novel, which yielded thinner material than the duo's previous "Waiting to Exhale" (1995). As for the latter, her detective seemed gay only for the sake of political correctness, and not for anything directly connected to the ponderous story itself.
Goldberg saved some of her best work at the end of the 90s for the small screen. She appeared sparingly in Christopher Reeve's movingly acted "In the Gloaming" (HBO,1997) as the live-in nurse of AIDS-stricken Robert Sean Leonard, who had come home to die. She acted in two spare-no-expenses extravaganzas, ABC's multiracial "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" (1997, as Queen Constantina) and NBC's "Alice in Wonderland" (1999, as a laid-back, marvelously made-up Cheshire Cat), sandwiched around another "Wonderful World of Disney" presentation (fulfilling her contractual obligation to the Mouse), "A Knight in Camelot" (ABC, 1998), a remake of Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". Though Twain would not have known what to make of either its vision of Camelot or of Whoopi Goldberg, the combination made for enjoyable, family viewing. That year also saw her executive produce a new syndicated version of "Hollywood Squares", as well as occupying its center square, and she has continued to lend her voice to quality feature animation projects like "A Christmas Carol" (1997), "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie" and "The Rugrats Movie" (both 1998). In addition to gracing the cast of "Girl Interrupted" (1999), starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, Goldberg executive produced and starred in "Kingdom Come" (2001).
"The View" is hosted by Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd. The Tom Cruise interview at ABC Studios in Video: Scientology Beliefs On Soul CBSTom Cruise calls Travolta death 'horrific' Kansas City StarTom Cruise calls Travolta death 'horrific' Washington Postall 3,157 news articles
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Stumbling upon a psychic con artist Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) who can hear but not see him, he convinces her to help him warn Molly that she might Blu-ray Review: Ghost Blogcritics.orgGhost (Blu-ray) digitallyOBSESSEDGhost Holds Up on Blu-ray Lumino Magazineall 4 news articles
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