Actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg, n&233;e Caryn Johnson, did some of her first work as a performer in Berkeley in the 1970s, and it was there after she had her first taste of fame that she purchased a modest Victorian home in 1985, on McKinley Street. Goldberg has held onto the home, originally purchased for $335,000, all this time, despite not making many appearances in the Bay Area in recent years, and it's now on the market for $1.275 million, 30 years later, as Curbed first reported. Goldberg currently lives in New York, working daily on The View, and she also owns homes in New Jersey and Vermont.
CBS 5 notes that during Goldberg's time in Berkeley, in the late 70s, she had a number of jobs, working as "a bank teller, a mortuary cosmetologist, even a bricklayer." During that time she became part of the city's oldest avant-garde theater troupe, the Blake Street Hawkeyes, and it was there that she created her one-woman show, The Spook Show, that would later tour through New York and Europe. Her very first film appearance was in the San Francisco-set experimental film Citizen: I'm Not Losing My Mind I'm Giving It Away (1982) by local filmmaker William Farley.
It's unclear how much time Goldberg spent in the Berkeley house over the years, or why she's deciding to sell her now. She has lost both her mother and brother in the last five years, but her brother, who passed away last month, lived in L.A.
The compound now has an illegally converted barn that is a full-fledged guest house, with its own kitchen and fireplace, but the listing notes that this is not a legal dwelling unit I guess for in-law rental purposes.
The main house has three bedrooms and is 1455 square feet, and the kitchen looks recently updated courtesy of IKEA. You can see all the interior shots here.
