Oprah Winfrey speaks out about her nervous breakdown

OPRAH WINFREY suffered a nervous breakdown as she tried to deal with improving her struggling TV network OWN last year.

The talk show queen admitted feeling “a kind of numbness” and other symptoms related to the condition as the Oprah Winfrey Network failed to bring in the viewers.

Speaking about director Jason Russell, who suffered a nervous breakdown last year, Oprah said: “I was sitting and listening to Jason describe his symptoms saying, ‘this sounds pretty familiar to me.’ In the beginning it was just sort of speeding and a kind of numbness and going from one thing to the next.”

The 59-year-old US billionaire says it was while filming scenes for the civil rights film The Butler that she realized she was in the midst of a breakdown.

“I thought, ‘All right, if I don’t calm down I’m going to be in serious trouble.’

“I was in the middle of doing voiceovers, you know? And I remember closing my eyes in between each page because looking at the page and the words at the same time was too much stimulation for my brain.

Oprah Winfrey was humbled last year when she nearly had a nervous breakdown while balancing her role in "Lee Daniels' The Butler" with her struggling television network.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah says she almost suffered a nervous breakdown last year while filming “The Butler” and running around the country interviewing celebrities for her struggling network — but that’s not such a bad thing to admit.
It turns out, all the money in the world — the mansion, the trips, the days when she gave cars out to her audience — doesn’t insulate her from life’s troubles.