whoopi goldberg (14 posts)

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Alec Baldwin wasn't simply "saddened" and "sorry" after his April 2007 voice-mail tirade against his daughter leaked onto the Internet—he was suicidal.

"[I was] very serious…I spoke to a lot of professionals, who helped me," the actor says in the upcoming issue of Playboy. "If I committed suicide, they [Kim Basinger's team] would have considered that a victory. Destroying me was their avowed goal."

The actor also explains why he chose to trust The View with his public show of remorse, and why he'll never set foot on the Today show's soundstage.

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As far as Whoopi Goldberg is concerned, she owes her Oscar to Patrick Swayze.

The View cohost said on Thursday's chatfest that her Ghost costar was the only person she "really thanked" when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1990 film.

Goldberg, who plays psychic Oda Mae Brown in the film, said she was only cast by director Jerry Zucker at Swayze's insistence.

According to the comic, Swayze told Zucker he refused to make the movie, in which he plays slain businessman Sam Wheat, "unless you put Whoopi Goldberg in there."

Swayze, 55, was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his rep confirmed on Wednesday. Contrary to reports that he has only weeks to live, his doctor has said he is "optimistic" about the actor's prognosis.

"Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment so far," Dr. George Fisher, Swayze's personal physician, said in a statement Wednesday.

Goldberg said she has not spoken to Swayze about his health problems.

"We want you to feel better—we'll talk soon, I hope," she said.

Whoopi Goldberg would like to thank the Academy...for apologizing for her Oscar-night slight.

Three days after being left out of a montage highlighting past hosts—despite being not only the first female emcee, but the first black one as well—and two days after getting choked up about her televised absence on The View, Goldberg told E! News that the ceremony's longtime producer, Gil Cates, had personally phoned her to make amends for the gross oversight.

"Gil called yesterday and said, 'I would have called you Monday but I hadn't slept,' " she said, explaining the one-day lag time between her emotional episode and the subsequent apology. "He said, 'Listen, I missed it. I didn't realize it wasn't in there.' "

"They had a lot on their minds," she said, going on to cite two more exclusions from the montage-heavy 80th Annual Academy Awards, including a fellow former host and a notable "In Memoriam" absentee.

"They even missed Brad Renfro and Steve Martin. I love Gil. He was the one who came to me and said, 'I want to put you in as first female host of the Oscars, let's make history.' "

While Goldberg now seems more accepting of the slight, telling E! News, "It was an oversight. It happens," she was slightly less amenable to the Oscar-night oops during Monday's View.

When her fellow cohosts Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Barbara Walters and Sherri Shepherd brought up her absence on the morning-after episode and grew increasingly vocal about their colleague's slighting, Goldberg stayed mostly silent until Shepherd asked whether she had perhaps made someone over at Oscars HQ upset.

"Undoubtedly," she said. "Undoubtedly I pissed somebody off yet again. You know what, I don't—I don't know."

When the women then rallied around Goldberg, telling her they thought she was a great (four-time) host and rattled off a list of her Oscar highlights, the genuinely moved moderator told her cohosts, "This makes up for it."

She then got up from the desk and gave each of her fellow cohorts a kiss on the cheek.

"It moved me that they took time out to talk about it," Goldberg, who served as host in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002, told E! News. "Colleagues don't usually do that. I was moved. It was a big step for them. They could have ignored it."

But for all her history of televised firsts, Goldberg said that the View moment was the first time she ever got so unintentionally emotional on TV.

"I never get like that," she said. "I tried at first to laugh it off. They overwhelmed me, and that's the truth. And I didn't know how to deal with it. That is why I had to get up. I was thinking, 'I am not going to let this tear roll down my face.' I got up and kissed everyone to say, 'Thank you and stop!' It was just a lovely gesture on their part."

—Additional reporting by Ken Baker

The 2008 Academy Awards might end up being remembered not for what was crammed into the three-hour-plus broadcast, but for what was glaringly left out.

While Jon Stewart gave Best Song cowinner Marketa Irglova a chance to finish her acceptance speech after the commercial break and the Academy is trying to explain why Brad Renfro didn't make the "in memoriam" cut, Whoopi Goldberg—and her loyal The View cohosts—can be added to the list of people with an ax to grind over Sunday's ceremony. 

After her fellow chatterbugs wondered aloud where Goldberg's moments were in the clipfest that included, among others, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Chevy Chase and Billy Crystal (it even included David Letterman, if only in an English Patient parody produced during one of Crystal's years), the View cohost on Monday looked genuinely hurt about being left out of a montage of memorable Oscar moments. (Watch the ladies' dissection of what went wrong.)

"Undoubtedly I pissed somebody off yet again," Goldberg said when Sherri Shepherd asked whether she had made someone mad. "You know what, I don't—I don't know." 

"Maybe they accidentally lost a clip of you hosting...But I think it's wrong," Hasselbeck said.

"We think you're a great host," Barbara Walters offered after pointing out that Goldberg had some "wonderful moments" onstage.

"I think we should do our own montage of you to make up for," Hasselbeck added. 

"Being slighted is never fun," Joy Behar commented.

"This makes up for it," Goldberg said gratefully, standing up to give each of her cohosts a kiss on the cheek. Walters gave her a big hug. 

Goldberg hosted the Oscars four times (during which she changed clothes about 18 times), in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002. She won a Best Supporting Actress statue for Ghost in 1990, a moment that was included in a montage for that category. 

Also a Tony, Grammy and Emmy winner, Goldberg is the only African-American actress with two Oscar nominations (the other came for lead actress for The Color Purple in 1985) and she became the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award after Gone with the Wind's Hattie McDaniel in 1940. 

But just as her comedic skills livened up Ghost, Goldberg definitely brought the funny when she pulled hosting duty, although not everyone appreciated the entertainer's brand of humor at all times. 

She made a royal entrance in 1999, coming out in creamy white face à la Cate Blanchett in the much revered Elizabeth once she had taken on the role of the Virgin Queen. Goldberg introduced herself as "the African Queen." 

"Some of you may know me as the Virgin Queen, but I can't imagine who," she said.