Whoopi Goldberg turns 70: Her 10 Best Movies – Ranked! | film

Or: Winona, overwhelmed. Mostly, this is directed by Angelina Jolie, whose movie-stealing turn as one of Ryder’s fellow patients in a US psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s won her an Oscar. However, do not discount Goldberg’s contribution. Valerie, the head nurse, and her fellow staff, played by Vanessa Redgrave and Jeffrey Tambor, provide the emotional foundation on which their younger co-stars (including Elisabeth Moss and Brittany Murphy) can soar.

9. Made in America (1993)

Goldberg is the owner of an African bookstore, where her daughter (Nia Long) tracks down her sperm donor father (Ted Danson). It is hatred for the parents at first sight, but the hatred turns into love. Despite a lot of theatrics, and some unfortunate slapstick involving an escaped elephant, Goldberg somehow clings to her dignity. There are strange moments, such as Danson staring at a photo of his daughter as a baby and quietly saying to himself: “Funny thing, sperm.” Or Goldberg ordered him to “smell me” before they locked lips first. But the hugging itself should not be sniffed at. Even in 1993, interracial romance was taboo in American cinema: the love scene between Goldberg and Sam Elliott had been cut from Fatal Beauty just six years earlier.

8. Boys on the Side (1995)

Sugar and Spice Road, the first installment was provided by director Herbert Ross (Steel Magnolias), and the second was provided by screenwriter Don Ross (Reversal of Sex). Goldberg plays Jane, a musician who leaves New York after breaking up with her girlfriend, and travels with Robin (Mary-Louise Parker), who is HIV-positive, and Holly (Drew Barrymore), who is escaping an abusive relationship. It’s the 1990s, so Jane can’t simply be lesbian: her sexuality has to be explored through straight characters. No matter: Goldberg brings the goods.

7. The Long Walk Home (1990)

This shepherd film set in 1950s Alabama is part of Goldberg’s Maids and Housekeepers trilogy (see also: The Heart of Clara and Corinna, Corinna). But she gives a wonderful, nuanced performance as an obedient servant in a family whose matriarch (Sissy Spacek) is just waking up to racial inequality. Behind the scenes, Goldberg successfully fought to retain footage of her character’s family in the final cut. On screen, she uses her patience brilliantly, especially when waiting for a white dinner party in which the guests are openly racist. “People told me this performance was too restrictive,” she later said. “It’s limiting because that’s what these women had to do. They were crazy, but they had to work to support their families.”

6. Monkey Bone (2001)

In the role of Death, stationed behind a purgatory-like downtown office where a hapless cartoonist (Brendan Fraser) finds himself stuck, Goldberg wears an eye patch, a hood crossed with a tricorn hat and a smoker cap, and a breast pocket filled with pens. This poses no impediment to her duties when her head explodes: she simply demands that another head be taken from the shelf, brought back Oz-style, and attached to her neck. An unusually eccentric project for Goldberg, but it’s just another day at the desk of Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.

5. The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)

Michelle Pfeiffer is the distraught mother whose three-year-old son has disappeared, and Goldberg is the tenacious detective who commits to the case and becomes a family friend as the years go by. Her most complicated scene occurs early on, when she suddenly retracts Pfeiffer’s affectionate offer of gratitude, then offers an explanation: “Look, I’m black, I’m a woman, I’m a detective supervisor, and I’m gay. You know that? So I always feel like Texas eyes are on me.”

4. Sister Law (1992)

Many of Goldberg’s roles were snubbed by other actors: Jumpin’ Jack Flash was intended for Shelley Long, Burglar for Bruce Willis, while Fatal Beauty was rejected by Cher and Tina Turner. Even Sister Act only came about after Bette Midler turned her down. But it became her second biggest success, grossing $231 million worldwide and spawning a sequel and a lower-quality theatrical version. She plays Delores, a singer who causes chaos among the goons when she hides in a convent after witnessing a murder. Positives include an upbeat soundtrack (My Guy has been modified to My God) and her relationship with the British acting legend who plays Mother Superior. “You Maggie Smith!On the first day of filming, Goldberg said, “What are you doing on this damn movie?”

3. The Color Purple (1985)

What a start: Goldberg’s first Oscar-nominated film, an adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s Alice Walker novel about the squalid lives of African-American women in early 20th-century Georgia, couldn’t have been meatier. She tells Walker she’s willing to play any role, even if it’s just “dust on the floor,” though she gets the lead role of Celie, an abused and exploited young woman who comes to life in the company of singer Shug (Margaret Avery), even if Spielberg highlights homosexuality in the novel. Indeed, it is the director, tackling his first adult material, who feels like a makeshift newcomer, while actual newbies like Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey come off as seasoned pros. (The former appeared as a midwife in the 2023 version, which Winfrey produced.)

2. The Player (1992)

Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire, with Tim Robbins as Griffin Mell, a studio executive who murders a screenwriter, deploys his star power in a stroboscopic way: A-list stars, including Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Cher and Susan Sarandon, appear as themselves, flashing for the camera almost subliminally. Goldberg is one of the few who has played a character, who is a troublemaker. The skeptical and unfazed Pasadena police detective always enjoys the feline’s predilection, and is given to swinging her tampon in front of him with pleasure. Casting Goldberg alone is a means for Altman to subversively undercut the plot’s suspense, just as he later did by hiring Stephen Fry to play Gosford Park’s ineffective police inspector.

1. The Ghost (1990)

This was the film that won Goldberg an Academy Award, making her only the second black actress to do so (Hattie McDaniel had been the first half a century earlier in Gone with the Wind); The award also put her on the path to an EGOT award (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), which she finally achieved in 2002. But the role of Oda Mae Brown, a phony middleman who finds herself an unwitting conduit for a murdered Sam (Patrick Swayze) to connect with his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore), almost passed her by. Auditions were already underway, and Tina Turner was the front-runner for the role, when Goldberg heard about this unexpected soup of thriller, comedy and love story, and set up a meeting. The film’s screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, was terrified. “Anyone but Whoopi,” he pleaded. Later, he reflected on his words: “I mistakenly thought it would be too broad. But no one in the film is more perfect than her.” In fact, Ghost might be dangerously serious if it weren’t for her irreverence, verve, and bizarre readings, not least the translation of Sam’s warning into Oda Mae’s vernacular: “Molly, you’re in danger, girl.”