Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, and talk show host.

Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the south. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in and as Terry Dolittle in Jumping Jack Flash. Her latest role is the voice of ‘Stretch’ in Toy Story 3.

Goldberg has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards for her work in television. She was co-producer of the popular game show Hollywood Squares from 1998-2004. She has been the moderator of the daytime talk show The View since 2007. Goldberg has a Grammy, seven Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Tony, and an Oscar. In addition, Goldberg has a British Academy Film Award, four People’s Choice Awards and has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Goldberg was born as Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City and raised in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, the daughter of Emma, a nurse and teacher, and Robert James Johnson, Jr., a clergyman. Goldberg has described her mother as a “stern, strong, and wise woman” who raised her as a single mother after Goldberg’s father had left the family. Goldberg’s recent ancestors migrated north from Faceville, Georgia, Palatka, Florida, and Virginia. Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives, traced most of her ancestry to the Papel and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her racial admixture test revealed her genetic makeup to be 92

Wesley Ruggles was an American film director.

He was born in Los Angeles, a younger brother of actor Charles Ruggles. He began his career in 1915 as an actor, appearing in a dozen or so silent films, on occasion with Charles Chaplin.

In 1917, he turned his attention to directing, making more than 50 mostly forgettable films — including a silent film version of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence — before he won acclaim with Cimarron in 1931. The adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel Cimarron, about homesteaders settling in the prairies of Oklahoma, was the first Western to win an Academy Award as Best Picture.

Although Ruggles followed this success with the light comedy No Man of Her Own with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, the comedy I'm No Angel with Mae West and Cary Grant, College Humor with Bing Crosby, and Bolero with George Raft and Carole Lombard, few of his later films were in any way memorable .

Wesley Trent Snipes is an American actor, film producer, and martial artist. He has starred in numerous action-adventures, thrillers, and dramatic feature films and is well known for his role as Blade in the Blade trilogy. Snipes formed a production company titled Amen-Ra Films in 1991 and a subsidiary, Black Dot Media, to develop projects for film and television. Snipes has been training in martial arts since age twelve, earning a high ranking 5th dan black belt in Shotokan Karate. He has also trained as a student of Capoeira under Mestre Jelon Vieira and in a number of other disciplines including various styles of kung fu and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Snipes was born on July 31, 1962, in Orlando, Florida, the son of Marian, a teacher’s assistant, and Wesley R. Snipes, an aircraft engineer. He grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Snipes graduated from I.S. 131 an underprivileged middle school in the south Bronx and also attended the famed Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing, but moved to Florida before he could graduate. After graduating from Jones High School in Orlando, Snipes returned to New York and attended the State University of New York at Purchase, before being asked to leave the prestigious Acting Conservatory his junior year. Snipes also attended a few years at Southwest College in Los Angeles.

A 23-year-old Snipes was discovered by an agent while performing in a competition. He made his film debut in the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle Wildcats. Later that year he appeared on the trendy 1980’s TV show Miami Vice as a drug-dealing pimp in the episode ‘Streetwise’. In 1987, he appeared as Michael Jackson’s nemesis in the Martin Scorsese directed music video “Bad” and the feature film Streets of Gold. That same year, Snipes was also considered for the role of Geordi La Forge in the TV series .

Snipes’ performance in the music video “Bad” caught the eye of director Spike Lee. Snipes turned down a small role in Lee’s Do the Right Thing for the larger part of Willie Mays Hayes in Major League, beginning a succession of box-office hits for Snipes. Lee would later cast Snipes as the jazz saxophonist Shadow Henderson in Mo’ Better Blues and as the lead in the interracial romance drama Jungle Fever. Another important role for Snipes was the powerful drug lord Nino Brown in New Jack City, which was written specifically for him by Barry Michael Cooper. Another film in which his character was involved in drugs was the somber movie Sugar Hill.

The Watson family, known as “the first family of Hollywood”, were made famous in the early days of Hollywood as a family of child actors. Family members included Coy Watson Jr., Bobs, Delmar, Harry, Garry, Billy, Vivian, Gloria, and Louise, all of whom acted in motion pictures.

When Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios, which was just about 600 feet from the Watson home, needed child actors for film making, their father Coy Watson Sr. would provide the kids. The Watson children worked with some of the big stars in those days, including James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda.

The Watson brothers also worked as press, newsreel and television photographers during their adult careers.

The family lived by the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. The kids went to nearby Belmont High School and were very active in school activities, including photography and school plays.