Oprah Winfrey stars as a former slave in compelling drama 'Beloved.'

Jet, Oct 19, 1998

Oprah Winfrey returns to the silver screen in the compelling drama, Beloved, her first starring feature film role since she earned an Oscar nomination for The Color Purple in 1985.

Winfrey delivers a riveting performance as Sethe, an ex-slave who comes to terms with her horrific past and newly earned freedom.

Set in post-Civil War, Beloved is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison and was written for the screen by Akosua Busia along with Richard LaGravenese and Adam Brooks. It was directed by Jonathan Demme, who won an Academy Award for his work on the movie The Silence of the Lambs.

The haunting, emotion-packed drama chronicles Sethe's life after she risked death to escape from the Sweet Home Plantation years earlier.

Sethe has established a new life in a small house at the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, played by actress Kimberly Elise.

The suspense and mystery unfold when a childlike young woman who calls herself Beloved (actress Thandie Newton) arrives in town and moves in with the family.

Dressed infancy clothes and brand new shoes, Beloved is weak, feverish and almost incoherent. She stirs strong maternal feelings in Sethe, and fiercely protective ones in Denver.

The film also stars Danny Glover as Paul D., an old friend and former slave who comes to visit Sethe and is uneasy with Beloved's presence.

Adding to the film's success is actress Beah Richards as Denver's spirit-filled grandmother, Baby Suggs.

The few visitors who enter Sethe's dilapidated house must pass through a pulsing pool of red light, which momentarily soaks them in grief. Sethe and her daughter Denver are resigned to living under the powerful presence of a ghost baby who haunts their house. It is this ghost who is at the heart of Sethe's tragic past.

Winfrey is the driving creative force behind Beloved's journey to the screen. She bought the film rights to the novel in 1988 for her production company, Harpo Films. She also served as one of the film's producers.

She felt Beloved was unlike any story she had read, and that she was destined to bring it to life as a film.

"After I read the book," Winfrey recalls, "I felt that Beloved was part of the reason I was born, to tell that story on screen. I wanted to do with a movie what Toni Morrison had done with a book. She allowed us to see what slavery felt like, and never before had I seen a piece of work that allowed you to go into the interior of a person's spirit, to understand what slavery did to their soul."

Winfrey continues, "To say that I thought I knew something about slavery--having lived in this country as a Negro, then a Black person, and now an African-American--this movie makes the difference between understanding it and knowing it."

She adds, "Beloved is about what slavery did to people. It's about how it drove people mad, forced people to make choices no human being should have to make, and what happens as a result of making those choices. It's about the death of self, the birth of self and finding ways to make yourself whole."

To prepare for her role, Winfrey was blindfolded, given a different name and taken to a section along the Underground Railroad, she recently told TV Guide. The blindfold was then taken off and she was forced to live 24 hours like a slave trying to escape to freedom.

"They had this guy who was set up as a slave master who said, `You're mine now' and called me the 'n' word," she told TV Guide. "And then there was a moment when it all clicked, when I connected to the true meaning of slavery. It's just the stripping of one's humanity."

She said this difficult experience taught her how to feel the pain of slaves so that "the character could come through me," she explained.

Beloved also reunites Winfrey with her Color Purple co-star, Danny Glover. "From the very first day I read Beloved, I always saw Danny Glover,' she notes. "I think he is Paul D., incarnate, and there couldn't have been a better choice, in stature or spirit."

Glover explains that one of the greatest values of the movie is the time in which it takes place, the transition as slaves learn to live as free people.

"We haven't come to terms with that experience, and the relationship that experience has to the moment fight after. An enormous wave of humanity comes out of this experience."

Kimberly Elise, whose first film was Set It Off with Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox and Jada Pinkett Smith, says she relied heavily on the novel to help her create the character of Denver.

"When I read Beloved, Denver just got under my skin. Toni Morrison left me such a great map for the character within the book that Denver was there instinctively. My goal was to surrender myself to the character."

She adds, "Denver is an observer. It was a great challenge for me because I didn't have words to depend on. I had to communicate the character non-verbally. I felt that the less I said with words and the more I said with face and eyes and body, the more true it would be to Denver's character."

Newton, whose feature film credits include Jefferson in Paris and Interview with the Vampire, recalls how fate brought Beloved into her life. "About six years ago, a friend gave me the book because my name, "Thandiwe," is Zulu for beloved," says the actress who was born in London to a Zimbabwean mother and an English father.