Oprah Winfrey conquers acting fears in ´Henrietta Lacks´

NEW YORK: Before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed some of her cancerous cells to grow outside her body in a petri dish.

Dubbed HeLa, the cell line from the 31-year-old African-American woman became one of the most utilised in medical research, helping establish billion-dollar biomedical industries around the world for cancer treatment, vaccines -- including Johan Salk´s polio inoculation -- and even in-vitro fertilisation.

It was all done without her knowledge or consent.

Struggling with poverty and racism in Baltimore, Lacks´s family discovered the truth accidentally years later. Writer Rebecca Skloot´s subsequent account, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," rocketed to public attention earlier this decade, spending 75 weeks on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list, and prompting a public debate about the ethics of harvesting people´s cells.

Now, Oprah Winfrey has helped bring the story of Lacks and her "immortal" cell line to the small screen in a HBO film adaptation of the book that debuted on Saturday to mixed reviews.

The narrative focuses on Skloot´s interactions with Lacks´s daughter Deborah, played by Winfrey. A toddler when her mother died, she alternates between enthusiasm and suspicion of the project, eager to learn about her mother but prone to wild conspiracy theories.

The 63-year-old Winfrey, who once worked as a reporter in Washington, was determined to co-produce the film after reading the book. But the hugely successful talk show star -- who is one of the country´s most influential public figures with her own cable channel, OWN -- said she long resisted the idea of acting in it.

"I was really afraid to do this role," she said this week during a promotional tour with the director George Wolfe, who had urged her to take it on. "I said from day one, ´George, I don´t want to make a fool of myself.´"

´Measure up´

Winfrey has won acclaim for a number of previous film roles, including in "The Color Purple" (1985), "The Butler" (2013) and "Selma" (2014).

Still, "I don´t put myself normally in situations where I am out of control and I don´t know what I am doing," she said. "Everybody on set is better than I am because they´ve done it longer."

"That´s the fear, that you´re not going to measure up in the moment."

One of the ways the billionaire Winfrey was able to connect with the role was as a longtime campaigner against sexual assault.

"I came from a life of abuse," she said.

In parallel with Henrietta Lacks´ unfolding tale, her daughter gradually reveals her own untold story: the fact she her siblings faced mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of relatives after their mother´s death.

Still, Winfrey said she didn´t feel the kind of "rage and anger and fear" many other victims do. "I am pretty damn healed from all my past stuff."

So when it came to a particularly emotional scene, she fell back on what she´s most famous for.

Remembering meeting a student from a school she founded in South Africa, whom she knew had been abused by an aunt, she said: "I called her and said, "Tell me about your aunt...´"