Heart of Goldberg

Over here the term may be a little obscure, being limited to novelty cushions favoured by preteens

Over here the term may be a little obscure, being limited to novelty cushions favoured by preteens. But in America there is no confusion. Whoopi does not mean having a good time; it means fart. But it has also come to mean the most popular and successful black female entertainer of all time.

Whoopi Goldberg has been in-your-face up-front ever since she was a smart-arsed kid (her first public performance was at eight) and true to form the first "riff" of Book, ("chapter" would imply a prosaic underlying structure: there is none) gives us eight pages on wind, its place in the author's life and name.

Book is no celebrity autobiography with a litany of famous names and economy with the truth. The only names are those of her family, and truth is what Book is all about - uncomfortable truth, funny truth. The "riffs" could as easily be called "rants" as she lets loose on drivers, men's peeing habits, lavatory etiquette generally, men's sexual etiquette (or lack of), shopping malls, parking lots, religion, racial stereotyping. ("Don't call me an African American . . . It diminishes everything I've accomplished. I'm not from Africa . . . I can trace my roots back to the Mayflower. We're Seminole Indians, we're a couple of Jews from Russia . . . There's even some Chinese running through my blood.")

Book is a performance, albeit on paper, and a very funny and sometimes poignant one at that. However, Whoopi in person is very different. Quiet. Gently-spoken. No swearing. But the word she describes as a puritan acyonym (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge) decorates the pages of Book as liberally as black pepper on pizza.

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Whoopi Goldberg first hit the international billboards with the film The Color Purple, a piece of inspired casting by Steven Spielberg who had seen her on Broadway in a one-woman show presented by that other talent spotter, Mike Nichols. However, as Whoopi firmly reminded me when we talked in her suite overlooking the Thames at the Savoy, straight theatre was where she began.

"I started off doing theatre, it evolved into solo performance because they would say, `You'd be great in this part, but you're not quite right - you know, physically'." And her face, until now as composed as a nun, goes into overdrive, doing all those things we know from the screen, and she laughs. A great, gorgeous laugh that reverberates round the room. And, in spite of her huge boxoffice appeal, she says the number of film roles she gets offered is still very limited - for the same reasons.

`I don't have that much to choose from. It's the truth. They're generally scripts that some guy has rejected, because if you look at my filmography you'll see that there were four or five that were specifically for me, like Long Walk Home, or Col- or Purple. Boys On The Side was for me. But Bogus was written originally for a man, a man who discovers he has a son. Ghosts was written for another woman. Jumping Jack Flash was written for Shelley Long. Burglar was written for Bruce Willis. Sister Act was written for Bette Middler. It's very rare I get one that's just specifically mine."

Films are just the tip of Whoopi Goldberg's iceberg of a theatrical career. She's that rare commodity, an actress that can do comedy, a comedian who can act, a performer who can speak her own lines as well as those scripted by others. She has hosted her own talk show, she has provided the voices for a number of animation characters, she has fronted the Oscars twice. She's done Sesame Street and The Muppets (the highlight of which was a duet with Miss Piggy - Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend). Then there were five series of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Guinan. If that weren't enough, she can sing too and last year did a seventh month run of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on Broadway. The theatre continues to exert its pull. ("I just hope they do Art for three women. It's such a great play.")

And Whoopi Goldberg is not dismissive of her fame. Although the money has enabled her to help - anonymously - "families who are going through a tough time", it's the wider ripple-effect of the fame pebble that gives her most pleasure.

"Even when you don't think you're helping, you're helping. The mere fact that some little kid who may not look like anybody else is flipping through the television and sees one of my movies and thinks. `OK. I don't have to look like other people. I can look like her and be OK.' "

Whoopi Goldberg is not only a do-as-I say, but a do-as-I do. Children are particularly important to her. ("They know so much. Sometimes I wonder if it's a good thing. But the world they live in requires them to have that information. They are living with the idea of dying in school, walking to school, the possibility of not making it home.")

She's a vociferous campaigner on issues that other celebrities tend to avoid, specifically the importance of sex education for young people and its bedfellow, abortion. "One of the sad things for me is trying to get the folks in America to really discuss sex with teenagers. You can't stop them once they've discovered the possibilities of it feeling good - and it does, we enjoy it - so how can you in good conscience not give them the tools to save themselves?

Now, if they're not having sex, having the information isn't going to hurt them, but if they are having sex, you owe it to them to give them as much information as you can."

She talks earnestly, with no hint of the look-at-me performer. Dressed in grey, black and white she reminds me rather of the best kind of teacher. Unassuming. Someone who listens, and who when she speaks, speaks sense and makes you laugh.

Because when Whoopi Goldberg says something you can be sure it's from personal knowledge, which is where her strength as a campaigner lies. She was a child of the 1960s, when drugs "were no big thing. Everyone was at it, smoking reefers, dropping acid. And that includes the police." (Now she's a major campaigner against drug abuse.) And there was sex of course. Including orgies in Central Park? "You bet. It was a different time. You weren't afraid to sleep in the park. You could walk down the street and be loaded and not be afraid of a drive-by shooting. And sex was nothing to be afraid of. You need a pedigree to have sex now."

She was a single parent before she was 20. And eight years ago things came full circle when her daughter Alex, then aged 14, called to say she was pregnant. Although in theory an abortion was still an option, Alex had already made up her mind to have the baby. "It wasn't `Mom, what should I do'. It was `Mom, here's my decision'." The grandmother-to-be, only a thirtysomething herself, took it on the chin. "I was just so glad she called and told me. You want to think that you are the person they would come to, and she did. It wasn't something I discovered like in the eighth month." Nonetheless, for the pro-abortion campaigner it meant some soul-searching.

"She's a brave kid. And I had to understand that choice, means just that. That was the thing that was tough. That was the difficult thing. Because I'd been marching on choice, choice, choice, choice, choice. But choice goes both ways. And if you're going to talk the talk you've gotta walk the walk. And that was her choice. And we were fortunately in a position to help her do it and to be there as a support system - not everybody has that. There are so many out there who end up with these children and have nowhere to turn, which is why choice is important." Whoopi Goldberg's talent for taking life on the chin, seeing crises as challenges, and turning challenges into success, stems directly she believes from having grown up in a neighbourhood (Chelsea, Manhattan) where being black felt no different to being white. Where she had no sense of inequality.

"However, the older I get, the more I discover that there were restrictions in New York but I was never aware of them." And that was probably down to her mother Emma, a nurse, who brought up young Caryn and big brother Clyde single-handed and whose fierce but unpossessive love gave Whoopi Goldberg her blueprint for life. "Her attitude was there is nothing you can't do if you're willing to work really hard and go for it and to not let anything stop you. Don't let people stop you. Don't let their ideas of what you're supposed to be stop you. Get out and do it. That was everything to me. That was how I was raised and that was how I raised my kid. We come from this long line of very strong people going, `You know what? They may say that but go and do it anyway'. If you are willing to take the consequences of your actions then you must go and try. You must at least try."