Whoopi Goldberg

"Im an actor. Thats what I do. Im not a stand-up comic. I do characters. Im very good. Ill be better. But right now Im a very good actor."

"The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. Wed sit backstage and talk about names wed never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when youre unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You wont be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg."

"But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!" And no one laughed at all."

"For many, many, many years, there were not Jews in Israel. Okay?"

"Actresses can only play women. Im an actor, I can play anything."

"I know it wasnt rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I dont believe it was rape-rape."