Kirsty Young

My castaway this week is Whoopi Goldberg, a successful actor, comic and producer.

She made her name in the colour purple and won her Oscar for Ghost.

It was bound to happen.

Even as a child, she used to practise making acceptance speeches.

And today, she's one of only a handful of people to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony and Emmy Awards.

Yet despite her success, she is perhaps an uncomfortable role model.

The only person she wants to please, she says, is herself.

An observant and quick child, she was also headstrong.

She married young, had a child early.

Then she wrote her own sketch show.

It found its way onto Broadway and her career was launched.

I was in the right place at the right time, seen by the right person, she says.

And spectacular things happened.

Well, they surely did, Flippy Goldberg.

You were seen by the right person back in, what was it, the...

the 1980s, and that right person was Steven Spielberg.

Is it right?

Did you do a sort of private performance for him?

Yes.

Tell me about that.