Or: Winona, Overshadowed. Predominantly, that is, by Angelina Jolie, whose movie-stealing turn as one of Ryder\u2019s fellow patients at a late-1960s US psychiatric hospital won her an Oscar. Don\u2019t discount Goldberg\u2019s contribution, though. Soothingly understated as Valerie, the chief nurse, she and fellow staff members, played by Vanessa Redgrave and Jeffrey Tambor, provide the emotional grounding over which their younger co-stars (also including Elisabeth Moss and Brittany Murphy) can soar.<\/p>\n
9. Made in America (1993)Hate at first sight \u2026 with Ted Danson in Made in America. Photograph: Cinetext Collection\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n
Goldberg is the owner of an African bookstore whose daughter (Nia Long) tracks down her sperm-donor father (Ted Danson). It\u2019s hate at first sight for the parents, but antipathy turns to amorousness. Despite plenty of histrionics, and some regrettable slapstick involving a runaway elephant, Goldberg somehow clings to her dignity. There are bizarre moments, such as Danson gazing at a photograph of his daughter as a baby and saying softly to himself: \u201cFunny thing, sperm.\u201d Or Goldberg commanding him to \u201csmell me\u201d before they first lock lips. But the smooch itself is not to be sniffed at. Even in 1993, interracial romance was all but taboo in US cinema: a love scene between Goldberg and Sam Elliott was cut from Fatal Beauty only six years earlier.<\/p>\n
8. Boys on the Side (1995)Bringing the goods \u2026 Goldberg with Drew Barrymore in Boys on the Side. Photograph: Warner Bros\/Allstar<\/p>\n
A sugar-and-spice road movie, the former ingredient provided by director Herbert Ross (Steel Magnolias), the latter by screenwriter Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex). Goldberg plays Jane, a musician leaving New York after breaking up with her girlfriend, and hitting the road with Robin (Mary-Louise Parker), who has HIV, and Holly (Drew Barrymore), who is fleeing an abusive relationship. This is the 1990s, so Jane can\u2019t simply be a lesbian: her sexuality must be mulled over by the straight characters. No matter: Goldberg brings the goods.<\/p>\n
7. The Long Walk Home (1990)<\/p>\n
This patronising film set in 1950s Alabama is part of Goldberg\u2019s maids-and-housekeepers trilogy (see also: Clara\u2019s Heart and Corrina, Corrina). But she gives a fine, subtle performance as the dutiful servant in a household whose matriarch (Sissy Spacek) is only just waking up to racial inequality. Behind the scenes, Goldberg successfully fought to keep footage of her character\u2019s family in the final cut. On screen, she deploys stoicism brilliantly, especially when waiting on a white dinner party at which the guests are openly racist. \u201cPeople have told me it\u2019s a very restrained performance,\u201d she later said. \u201cIt\u2019s restrained because that\u2019s what those women had to do. They were mad, but they had to work to support their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
6. Monkeybone (2001)<\/p>\n
In the role of Death, stationed behind a desk in the purgatory-like Down Town where a hapless cartoonist (Brendan Fraser) finds himself stranded, Goldberg wears an eye patch, headgear that crosses a tricorn with a stovepipe hat, and a breast pocket overstuffed with pens. It is no impediment to her duties when her head explodes: she simply demands another one be taken from the shelf, Return to Oz-style, and screwed on to her neck. An unusually wacko project for Goldberg but just another day at the office for Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.<\/p>\n
5. The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)<\/p>\n
Michelle Pfeiffer is the distraught mother whose three-year-old son has gone missing, Goldberg the tenacious detective who sticks with the case and becomes a family friend as the years tick by. Her most complex scene occurs early on, when she recoils suddenly from Pfeiffer\u2019s affectionate display of gratitude, then offers an explanation: \u201cLook, I\u2019m Black, I\u2019m a woman, I\u2019m a detective supervisor, and I\u2019m gay. Did you know that? So I always feel like the eyes of Texas are on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. Sister Act (1992)Nun so fine \u2026 as the singing Deloris in Sister Act. Photograph: Touchstone\/Allstar<\/p>\n
Many of Goldberg\u2019s roles have been castoffs from other actors: Jumpin\u2019 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 her way after Bette Midler turned it down. But it became her second biggest hit, grossing $231m worldwide and spawning an inferior sequel and stage version. She plays Deloris, the singer causing havoc among the wimples when she hides out in a convent after witnessing a murder. Pluses include a lively soul soundtrack (My Guy is tweaked to My God) and her rapport with the British acting legend cast as Mother Superior. \u201cYou\u2019re Maggie Smith!\u201d Goldberg said<\/a> on the first day of shooting. \u201cWhat are you doing in this fucking movie?\u201d<\/p>\n 3. The Color Purple (1985)<\/p>\n What a start: Goldberg\u2019s Oscar-nominated movie debut, in Steven Spielberg\u2019s adaptation of Alice Walker\u2019s novel about the woebegone lives of African American women in early 20th-century Georgia, could scarcely have been meatier. She had told Walker that she was willing to play any part, even if it was just \u201cthe dirt on the floor\u201d, though she landed the lead role of Celie, the abused and exploited young woman who flickers to life in the company of the singer Shug (Margaret Avery), even if Spielberg goes light on the novel\u2019s lesbianism. In fact, it is the director, tackling his first self-consciously grownup material, who feels like the tentative newcomer, while actual newbies such as Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey seem like seasoned pros. (The former has a cameo as a midwife in the 2023 version, which Winfrey produced.)<\/p>\n 2. The Player (1992)<\/p>\n Robert Altman\u2019s Hollywood satire, with Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill, the studio executive who murders a screenwriter, deploys its star wattage in stroboscopic fashion: A-listers including Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Cher and Susan Sarandon appear as themselves, flashing past the camera almost subliminally. Goldberg is one of the few playing a character, and she is a riot. Her sceptical, unfazed Pasadena police detective is perpetually amused by the shifty Mill, and given to blithely swinging her tampon around in front of him. Goldberg\u2019s casting alone is a way for Altman to subversively undermine the plot\u2019s suspense, just as he later would by hiring Stephen Fry to play the ineffectual police inspector in Gosford Park.<\/p>\n 1. Ghost (1990)Irreverent \u2026 with Patrick Swayze in Ghost, the film for which she won an Oscar. Photograph: Paramount\/Allstar<\/p>\n This was the film that won Goldberg an Oscar, making her only the second Black female performer to do so (Hattie McDaniel had been the first, half a century earlier in Gone With the Wind); the prize also put her on the path to Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) status, which she finally achieved in 2002. But the role of Oda Mae Brown, the bogus medium who finds herself an unwitting conduit for the murdered Sam (Patrick Swayze) to communicate with his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore), nearly passed her by. Auditions were already under way, with Tina Turner the clear favourite for the part, when Goldberg heard about this unlikely stew of thriller, comedy and love story, and wangled a meeting. The film\u2019s screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, was aghast: \u201cAnybody but Whoopi,\u201d he pleaded. Later, he ate his words: \u201cI mistakenly thought she\u2019d be too broad. But nobody in the movie is more perfect than her.\u201d Indeed, Ghost would be dangerously earnest without her irreverence, vitality and nutty line readings, not least the translation of Sam\u2019s warning into Oda Mae\u2019s own vernacular: \u201cMolly, you in danger, girl.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Or: Winona, Overshadowed. 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