Whoopi Goldberg: "The Color Purple" | Interviews

This is Whoopi Goldberg, the star of “The Color Purple.” Two years ago she was starring in her own one-woman show Off-Broadway. A few years before that, she was working in repertory theater in San Diego. A few years before that, she was working as a bricklayer and a mortuary cosmetologist. She refuses to tell anyone her real name, because she finds it boring. She originally changed her name to “Whoopi Kushon,” but decided that was a bit much.

I am giving you these facts all at once because a lot of people will be curious about Whoopi Goldberg after “The Color Purple” opens on Friday. She gives one of the best screen performances I've ever seen, and she is just about a shoo-in for an Academy Award nomination. “Whoopi Goldberg for the Oscar!” Oprah Winfrey says. She co-stars in the same movie, and so is a little biased. “Who's her competition? Meryl Streep? I don't care if Meryl break-dances on water, this year it's Whoopi.”

Meanwhile, the subject of these words is sitting cross-legged in a big chair in a New York hotel and lighting a Marlboro. She is wearing a pullover sweater that is several sizes too big and white painter's pants. She says she has never thought about actually being nominated for an Oscar, but watching the Oscar show has been a very important ritual for her since she was this high, and her dream is to present one of the Oscars.

“I see myself, my fingers trembling, tearing open the envelope and saying, ‘The winner is…' And then I see the winner hurrying onto the stage, all flustered and ecstatic, and I see myself standing back, out of the limelight, sharing that person's moment of triumph, and then, when they've finished their speech, helping to escort them off the stage. That's how I've always pictured it.  Of course, everybody asks, ‘What are you going to wear?' Last year, I was in the audience; I wore a white linen coat and bright orange Levis and a silk tie.”

“The Color Purple” centers completely on her Goldberg's character, a woman named Celie, who is born near the turn of the century, and who spends a life of great suffering before finally finding a way to joy and happiness. Celie's early years are a catalog of pain. She is twice made pregnant by her father, who gives away the children. She is married to a man who beats her, and who brings home and flaunts his fancy woman. She lives virtually like a slave until, miraculously, the fancy woman takes a liking to her and teaches her a few things she didn't know, such as that sex can feel good, that tenderness is permitted, that she has a beautiful smile and that she should stand up for herself more often.