This Cultural Life

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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives.

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives across theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. Hosted by John Wilson.

BBC Radio 4 LW

This Cultural Life: Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg

BBC Radio 4 - This Cultural Life, Whoopi Goldberg

Actor Whoopi Goldberg reveals the most important influences that shaped her career.

Actor Whoopi Goldberg reveals the most important influences and experiences that shaped her own creativity.

Whoopi Goldberg is the one of very few people to have won all four of America’s big awards - Emmy, Grammy Oscar and Tony - for her work in film, theatre and television. Brought up by a single mother in a New York housing project, Whoopi Goldberg first made her name on stage with a solo comedy show before making her film debut in an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple. 

Discussing her biggest cultural turning points with John Wilson, she recalls her earliest experiences of acting at the Hudson Guild, a children’s community project. Having struggled at school, she was encouraged by her mother to make the most of free cultural opportunities in the city, including museums and public lectures, which fuelled her fascination with language. She also remembers seeing the Joseph Papp Theatre troupe, which performed free Shakespeare plays in New York parks. 

Whoopi recalls her friend and mentor Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate who, after seeing her solo stage show in San Francisco, directed her on Broadway. After that show became a hit, Whoopi Goldberg was invited by Steven Spielberg to perform at his private theatre leading to her casting in the role of Celie in his 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, a film debut that earned Whoopi Goldberg an Academy Award nomination. Since then, she has made around a hundred films, including Ghost, for which she won an Academy Award, and Sister Act. She has hosted the Academy Awards several times, and has forged a career as an opinionated television personality. Whoopi also talks about her latest movie Till, the story of Mamie Till-Bradley, who pursued justice after the murder of her 14-year old son Emmett in 1955. 

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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