At a young age she knew her life would be different to that of her grandmother
Oprah Winfrey has spoken about her life, saying that she is proud she never ‘had to harm anybody’ to achieve her success and career.
As she turns 70 today (January 29), the legendary TV presenter was reflecting on the incredible success she has achieved despite a difficult start to life, the Mirror reports.
Oprah was sexually abused by a cousin at the age of nine, lost a premature baby son, Canaan, when she was 14, and spent much of her teenage years living apart from her teenage mother Vernita.
Recalling her childhood living with her grandmother on a pig farm, she said: “I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, ‘You are going to have to learn to do this,’ and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother’s life.”
From an Oscar nomination for her role in the Color Purple to fronting one of the biggest chat shows in the world, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah is now one of the most famous and powerful women in the world.
She’s also carried out some of the most famous celebrity interviews of all time, including the bombshell interview with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2021, which saw the couple accuse members of the royal family of making racist comments about their baby.
Having become a billionaire, Oprah has also used her wealth to carry out a lot of charity and philanthropic work, including setting up the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a boarding school in South Africa, and the Oprah Winfrey Foundation.
Looking back on her life, she said she was particularly proud about the fact that she had achieved everything she had without ‘harming anybody.’
She said: “The reason why 70 feels so solid and so good is because I didn’t have to harm anybody in the process. Not only did I not harm, I brought a lot of joy to people.”
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