Oprah Winfrey says 'Color Purple' helped her deal with childhood rape

Oprah Winfrey recalled how, in the 1980s, upon learning that Spielberg was adapting the film, she had 'literally prayed on my knees every night for the opportunity to be in that movie'. Photo: Reuters

Oprah Winfrey said The Color Purple helped her cope with the trauma of being raped as a young girl, as she introduced a new film based on Alice Walker's acclaimed novel Thursday.

The movie - a musical - is the second big-screen adaptation, after Steven Spielberg's 1985 drama, and again portrays the hardships and sexual abuse faced by Black women in the US South during the early 20th century.