By any measure, Oprah Winfrey has accomplished enough in her life to rest on her laurels until the end of the world. But Winfrey — cultural icon, movie star, media mogul, billionaire — is not most people.
“I will never be done until I take my last breath,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “And whenever that happens, it will be a sigh of relief.”
As Winfrey approaches her 70th birthday next month, she celebrates the Christmas edition Purplemusical adaptation of the original 1985 film and Broadway play based on the acclaimed novel by Alice Walker, she reviews her remarkable journey.
Purple: Oprah, Fantasia and all the stars who attended the premiere of the movie musical in Los Angeles
“Gratitude is really my religion,” says Winfrey, whose breakthrough performance as Sofia in the 1985 Oscar-nominated classic “changed everything” for her. “It was a spiritual opening for me to see my life in a different way.”
Joe Pugliese
Winfrey begins and ends each day with “Thank you,” a cornerstone of the time-honored gratitude practice she recommends for everyone. “If you train yourself to do that, you’ll walk through life feeling abundance instead of scarcity,” she says. “Obviously people are going to say, ‘Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say, Oprah.’ But I’ve been doing it forever.”
For one thing, she appreciates every day how different her trajectory could have been—and never forgets where she came from. If Winfrey had stayed in Milwaukee after her teenage years with her mother, Vernita Lee, she believes her chances of survival would have been poor. “I would be trapped inside my own body, my own weight, my own pain,” says Winfrey, whose early years were marked by abuse, poverty and hopelessness. – I would die too soon.
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Oprah Winfrey at the premiere of “The Color Purple”.
Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
An incredible alchemy of time, talent and persistence, and a life-changing move at the age of 14 to live with her father in Nashville helped set her on an extraordinary path.
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Global fame and hard-earned success would follow, including 25 seasons of her groundbreaking eponymous talk show, but Winfrey never lost sight of her life’s purpose: to uplift others. “I’m still continuing to ascend and now I’m in a space where my offering is to help other people ascend,” she says. “The principle that is the foundation, the cornerstone for my work in the world… Life is better when you share it.”
While Winfrey has impacted countless lives over the decades, her legacy remains unfinished business. “Now I know what Maya Angelou told me when I came back from opening my school in South Africa and I said, ‘Oh, Maya, this school will be my greatest legacy, these girls.’ And she said, ‘You have no idea what your legacy is going to be… because your legacy is never one thing. Your legacy is every life you’ve touched.'”
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Oprah Winfrey.
Joe Pugliese
Oprah Winfrey opens up about the moments that changed her life
“She went on to say, this is everyone who’s ever watched a show and decided because of something you said, I’m going to go back to school. I’m going to leave my abusive husband. I’m going to stop hitting my kid. I’m going to get a better bra. So when I think about to the millions of people who have heard something that has opened a floodgate of hope, of longing, of awareness, just a little bit, that’s a life that I’ve touched. And you can’t get any better than that.”
The late poet and memoirist also offered a path of inspiration. “Maya Angelou wrote a song for me called ‘Carry On,’ which you can just Google,” Winfrey says. “But one of the most important lines is, ‘My wish for you is that you continue to amaze the evil world with your acts of kindness.’ And that’s what I intend to do.”
For more on Winfrey and Purplepick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
Purple will be released in theaters on December 25, 2023.
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Source: HIS Education