• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

—M.T.

“Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.”

—Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi: When I was born, upon emerging from my mom, I found the light and put my face up into it and smiled—half in and half out. I’ve been that way ever since. I live in a very strange and wonderful world in my head.

It all began with my mother and her funny accents. When I was little, my mom and her cousin Arlene did dialects all the time, just to make themselves laugh. They would talk as little, old Jewish ladies, or Spanish guys, or Hungarians. What’s funny is that they’d do these dopey foreign accents, but neither of them had ever left the country. I just loved that. I always wanted to go to the places their accents were from.

I’d hear them pretending to speak French, and I’d think, Oh, I can speak French, too! But when I’d try, they’d look at me like I had four heads.

“How did you learn all these languages?” I’d ask.

“What languages?” my mother would say.

What’s funny is that my mom is very straightforward and deep. But somehow, when she got together with Arlene, they’d become two of the silliest people I knew.

“I used my imagination to make the grass

whatever color I wanted it to be.”

—Whoopi Goldberg

As a child, I wasn’t very fast, and I was kind of quiet—but I could act. I remember when I was about eight or nine, I told my mother, “I’m going to Hollywood to become a star!” And I believed that could really happen—I had seen it on The Little Rascals ! But what I really wanted to be was Jean Harlow, coming down that enormous staircase in Dinner at Eight. That is my first cognizant movie memory. I wanted to have that effect, floating down the stairs—where everything in the room just stops. But I didn’t become that actress. All I did was tell great stories.

When I was a little girl, I loved to hear my mom read, and then I would make up the most wonderful tales—about fairies and dragons and princes, all sorts of magical people. I’d also have full conversations with inanimate objects, or animals, which is something I still do. I like to give voice to animals because I truly believe I can see what they’re thinking. My cat is a Russian Blue—he’s gorgeously grey—and I have these great conversations with him. I do most of the talking. He just looks at me and sort of sucks his teeth. But I know what he’s thinking.

“I don’t have pet peeves, I have whole kennels of irritation.”

—Whoopi Goldberg

I didn’t go to high school. Like many comedians, I was sort of a disciplinary problem. My mother would try to drag me to school, but somewhere along the line, she recognized that school just wasn’t for me, and that it was better to know where I was than to have me hiding out.

So we made a deal: She wouldn’t make me go to school as long as I kept myself occupied with something that interested me.

So I would go to museums, or hang out at home and listen to Richard Pryor or Moms Mabley. Moms made me laugh, just insanely. And Richard would tell these great stories.

I also liked watching old movies. Back then, movies were on TV all the time. You had the Million Dollar Movie, The Early Show, The Late Show, The Late, Late Show. And then there was that great program in the middle of the day, hosted by Gloria DeHaven. She’d come on-screen to introduce the movie, wearing a caftan with her hair coiffed. She looked amazing.

But it was always hard for me to figure out what I was as a performer. I didn’t want to do stand-up comedy because, in stand-up, you have to be really brave. When you’re a storyteller, you can be semi-brave.

So when I was 25, I wrote a show to demonstrate what I thought I could do. One of my characters was the little girl who wanted long hair. I’d always wanted to be a Breck girl, because I dreamed about being on the back of a magazine. But it was pointed out to me, fairly early, that I was perfect—except for one thing. I thought, Oh, so if I had blond hair maybe . . .

So my little girl character wore a half-slip on her head, tossing it around,