Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955), known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (), is an American actress, comedian, author, and television host. She has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards and is one of the few entertainers to have won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. She was the second black woman to win an Academy Award for acting. Goldberg's breakthrough role was Celie, a mistreated woman in the Deep South,
Background and early life
Caryn Elaine Johnson was born in Manhattan, New York City on November 13, 1955, the daughter of Robert James Johnson, Jr. (March 4, 1930 - May 25, 1993), a Baptist clergyman, and Emma Johnson (nee Harris; September 21, 1931 - August 29, 2010), a nurse and teacher. She was raised in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses.  Goldberg has described her mother as a "stern, strong, and wise woman" who raised her as a single mother with her brother Clyde (c. 1949 - May 11, 2015), who died of a brain aneurysm. She attended a local Catholic school, St Columba's when she was younger. Her more recent forebears migrated north from Faceville, Georgia, Palatka, Florida, and Virginia. She dropped out of Washington Irving High School.  She has stated that her stage forename ("Whoopi") was taken from a whoopee cushion; "If you get a little gassy, you've got to let it go. So people used to say to me, 'You're like a whoopee cushion.' And that's where the name came from." She said in 2011, "My mother did not name me Whoopi, but Goldberg is my name, it's part of my family, part of my heritage. Just like being black." Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in his book In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, found that all of Goldberg's traceable ancestors were African Americans, that she has no known Jewish ancestry, and that none of her ancestors were named Goldberg. Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives, traced part of her ancestry to the Papel and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her admixture test indicates that she is of 92 % sub-Saharan African origin and of 8 % European origin.  According to an anecdote told by Nichelle Nichols in Trekkies (1997), a young Goldberg was watching Star Trek, and upon seeing Nichols's character Uhura, exclaimed, "Momma! There's a black lady on TV and she ain't no maid!" This spawned lifelong fandom of Star Trek for Goldberg, who would eventually ask for and receive a recurring guest-starring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  In the 1970s, Goldberg relocated to Southern California before settling in Berkeley, where she worked various odd jobs, including as a bank teller, a mortuary cosmetologist, and a bricklayer. There, she joined the avant-garde theater troupe, the Blake Street Hawkeyes, and taught comedy and acting classes which were attended by Courtney Love. Between 1979 and 1981, she lived in East Germany, working in a number of theater productions.
Where was she born?
Manhattan, New York City
Manhattan, New York City