Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American media personality, actress, television producer, literary critic and magazine publisher, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the first African American to be one of America’s top philanthropists, and was once the world’s only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale study claims broke 20th century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream. By the mid 1990s she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, she is generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. In 2006 she became an early supporter of Barack Obama and one analysis estimates she delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race, an achievement for which the governor of Illinois considered offering her a seat in the U.S. senate.

Date of Birth
January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States

Birth Name
Oprah Gail Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey Height is
5′ 6½” (169cm)

Oprah Winfrey website: www.oprah.com

Profile at IMDB: Oprah Winfrey

James Douglas Muir “Jay” Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host. From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. During his tenure, the show held the top ratings position in its time slot on nearly every weekday. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which airs weeknights at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time, UTC-5), also on NBC.

Date of Birth
April 28, 1950 – New Rochelle, New York, United States

Birth Name
James Douglas Muir Leno

Jay Leno Height is
5′ 11″ (180cm)

Jay Leno web site: www.thejaylenoshow.com

IMDB – Biography, Movies and pictures: Jay Leno