The Joy of Being Whoopi Goldberg

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Taping 120 talk-show conversations and doing what she calls the "mogulette number" that goes with the project will keep Whoopi busy for a few weeks. She has a continuing role as Guinan, the psychic bartender, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But she has no film roles in view, though she is enthusiastic about Made in America, a comedy with Ted Danson that she finished not long ago. She does get film offers, but not as many as one might think. A couple of years ago she gave a wry answer to an interviewer from Premiere magazine who asked why she appeared in so many not-so-hot films. "I did the pictures I was offered," she said. "Do you think I would sit around and say, 'Here's great scripts, here's crappy scripts; I'll do the crappy ones'?"

She wants to work in Soweto again, but for now she's happy to spend long weekends at her Connecticut unfarmed farm, where it's green and peaceful. She has three horses there, and you can tell by the names -- Peppy Bell, Shadow and Quisma -- that she has owned them in her mind since she was little. Does she ride English style? Course not; she grew up on western movies, so she's a cowgirl, "but not too good at it." Getting on toward 40, she has two brief marriages behind her ("They seemed like a lifetime") and now, she says, lives happily alone. "But I've got family; I'm surrounded." Her daughter and her older brother work with her in Los Angeles. "It's a good time in my life. I'm feeling pretty good about myself these days."