Celie

Celie (played by Whoopi Goldberg in her breakout performance) is the main character in the 1985 drama The Color Purple, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker (#Bi2). It was also later adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical.

Celie has a harrowing start to her life in rural Georgia in the early 20th century, being raped by her father and bearing ancestral children and then getting pawned off to marriage to a cruel man, Mister who originally wanted to marry her sister, Nettie. It isn’t until Mister’s regular mistress, Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) passes through town that a romantic encounter with the chanteuse leads to Celie’s sexual awakening. Though the tale has multiple bleak passages, it is ultimately a story about Celie’s triumph, with her inner renaissance stemming from her realized same-sex attraction to Shug.