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To the world, she is simply “Oprah,” a household name for decades at this point. Why? Well, for starters, Oprah Winfrey has worn many hats after all these years: American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, philanthropist. She is perhaps best known for The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ran in national syndication for 25 years.
““We are all looking for the same thing,” Winfrey recently said during her Variety’s Power of Women speech. “This is the one lesson I came away from doing The Oprah Winfrey Show. The common denominator of our experiences is that we all want to know that we matter and we want a show that reflects our values.”
Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career, which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman’s Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, Peabody, and more. On the big screen, she has rightfully earned two Oscars nods. And behind the camera, Winfrey has become a powerhouse producer. It’s no wonder, then, that she was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last year. Here’s a closer look at Winfrey’s finest films when serving as a producer.
In DreamWorks Pictures’ The Hundred-Foot Journey, the opening of a new Indian restaurant in the south of France next to a famous Michelin-starred eatery is nearly cause for a heated battle between the two establishments — until Le Saule Pleureur’s icy proprietress, Madame Mallory (Dame Helen Mirren), recognizes her rival’s undeniable brilliance for preparing masterful meals. The Hundred-Foot Journey abounds with flavors that burst across the tongue. A stimulating triumph over exile, blossoming with passion and heart, the end-result is a portrayal of two worlds colliding and one young man’s drive to find the comfort of home, in every pot, wherever he may be.
“Oprah Winfrey [has a] great sensitivity and understanding of women, and she has an instinctive, wonderful understanding of people in general,” Mirren once told Good Housekeeping about working with Winfrey. “Just to have that life force around is a great experience.”
4/5 Beloved (1998)
Beloved is a 1998 American psychological horror drama film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Thandiwe Newton. Based on Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel of the same name, the plot centers on a former enslaved person (Winfrey) after the American Civil War, her haunting by a poltergeist, and the visitation of her reincarnated daughter. Winfrey gives a tour-de-force performance, in addition to producing the film.
“[A] hard, hard line of dialogue to get through was what she said about freedom: ‘Wake up in the mornin’ and decide for myself what to do with the day.’ That line was life-transforming for me,” Winfrey once told Roger Ebert about her character in the film. “It was the purest definition of freedom. But to say that line was hard, hard, hard. Until I was in the moment with Danny, I never thought that it would be that hard. Finally Jonathan Demme said to me, ‘We’re gonna turn the camera around on Danny and let you come back and try again tomorrow.’ I felt like a failure. I’m blowing it. But I really needed to come back because I was so emotional about it I had lost touch with Sethe. Because she just tells it; she just tells it. She’s not all in it; she just tells it.”
3/5 The Great Debaters (2007)
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Marshall, Texas, described by James Farmer, Jr. as “the last city to surrender after the Civil War,” is home to Wiley College. Back in the 1930s, inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and his clandestine work as a union organizer, a Wiley professor (played by Denzel Washington) coaches the debate team to a nearly-undefeated season that sees the first debate between U.S. students from white and Black colleges and ends with an invitation to face Harvard University’s national champions. The team of four, which includes a female student and a very young James Farmer (Nate Parker), is tested in a crucible heated by Jim Crow, sexism, a lynch mob, an arrest and near riot, a love affair, jealousy, and a national radio audience. The Great Debaters is a gut-wrenching, inspiring story that was successfully brought to life with Winfrey’s help as producer.
2/5 Precious (2009)
In 1987 Harlem, 16-year-old Claireece Jones, who goes by her middle name Precious, is illiterate, overweight, and pregnant — for the second time, by the same man: her biological father, who has molested and raped her since she was a child, but whom she doesn’t see otherwise. Her infant daughter, nicknamed Mongo because she has Down Syndrome, lives with Precious’ grandmother; Precious herself lives with her mother Mary (Mo’Nique, in an Oscar-winning turn), who abuses her physically and emotionally. Mary does nothing but smoke, watch TV, and collect welfare through fraud. To escape her life, Precious daydreams of herself in glamorous situations. Because of her current pregnancy, Precious’ principal transfers her into an alternative school, where sympathetic teacher Miss Blu Rain (Paula Patton) tries to convince her that she can have a future if she learns how to read and write, and Precious starts to believe her. Precious is another heartbreaking story successfully adapted to the big screen with executive producer Winfrey’s aid.
1/5 Selma (2014)
And then there’s Selma, the Oscar-nominated, artfully photographed masterpiece. Winfrey delivers an awards-caliber supporting turn in addition to producing the film. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy as a civil rights leader has cast such a large shadow that it’s hard to imagine what the Movement would be without him. In 2014, Ava Duvernay lent her directing skills to create the powerfully crafted end result that is Selma. The story centers around Dr. King, played beautifully by David Oyelowo, attempts to procure African Americans the right to vote unencumbered by systemic oppression and voter blocking. The film was nominated for Best Picture, and won Best Original Song for the stirring “Glory” by John Legend and Common. It works as a reflection of how America was in the ’60s, a time of increased racial bigotry, turmoil, and strife. Go back and watch it, if you haven’t!
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