Vogue/Annie Leibovitz
(LOS ANGELES) — It’s hard to imagine that a woman like Oprah Winfrey has ever had a “down” moment, but the TV titan reveals that even she has battled depression.
She said she first experienced depression after her film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved hit theaters in 1998. “I got a call from someone at the studio, and they said, ‘It’s over. You got beat by ‘Chucky,'” she tells Vogue in a new interview.
“And I said, ‘Who’s “Chucky?’ What do you mean it’s over? It’s just Saturday morning!'” she recalled. “…[A]nd so began my long plunge into food and depression and suppressing all my feelings.”
Winfrey, 63, said her depression lasted for six weeks.
“I actually started to think, ‘maybe I really am depressed.’ Because it’s more than ‘I feel bad about this.’ I felt like I was behind a veil. I felt like what many people had described over the years on my show, and I could never imagine it.”
“That’s when the gratitude practice became really strong for me, because it’s hard to remain sad if you’re focused on what you have instead of what you don’t have,” she explained.
“It taught me to never again…put all of your hopes, expectations, eggs in the basket of box office,” Winfrey said. “Do the work as an offering, and then whatever happens, happens.”
Winfrey will be seen in theaters next year as Mrs. Which in the adaptation of the beloved book A Wrinkle in Time.
Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
