But instead, the 50-year-old icon is starting her 19th season on daytime talk TV. And on Monday's premiere of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," she kicked it off with an Oprah-sized stunt: Everybody in the audience got a new car, 276 midsize Pontiac G6's fresh off the assembly line — each worth $28,400. Total value: more than $7 million, courtesy of Pontiac.

On stage, jangling a set of car keys and dancing while the audience went wild with delight, was a new Oprah Winfrey.

We've watched Winfrey — one of the most influential celebrities of our time — go from Oscar-nominated actress for "The Color Purple" in 1985, the same year she launched "The Oprah Winfrey Show," to New Age guru for a nation in the '90s, to a savvy businesswoman who has amassed a $1 billion fortune.

Familiar, yet ever-changing.

Now, Winfrey's focus for this new season — of both her life and her television show, it seems — is "Wildest Dreams," as in making your wildest dreams come true, a ratcheting up of the annual "Favorite Things" show in which the audience gets all sorts of great goodies.

Persuading Pontiac to donate the cars was just the start. On Monday's show, she also helped homeless Alexandra Molina with new digs, a scholarship, a makeover from Tyra Banks, a Pontiac and a wardrobe by Express; and she bailed out a soon-to-be-evicted foster mom, throwing in new furniture and appliances.

A Wildest Dreams bus featuring Winfrey's best buddy and O magazine editor at large Gayle King will hit the road this season, granting more wishes.

"I know people think it sounds ridiculous coming from me: I really think that this is the beginning," Winfrey says.

The beginning of a move from spiritual mentor to Santa Claus? A fairy godmother for the new millennium?

"No, no no!" she says, in an interview in her elegant Harpo Studios offices. "That's an unfair characterization. I wanted it to be bigger than Santa Claus and not to be an act of a fairy godmother, because that's not who I am. Who I am is a person who understands what it means to give back. And what I really wanted for myself and the audience was to feel the "intention" of the "giving."

'The greatest day'

It sounds like a stock celebrity line — "giving back" — but Winfrey insists that while, yes, the premiere show was about creating buzz and raising ratings, it became something more than just sending the audience into spasms of surprise.

"I felt that it was one of the greatest days I've ever experienced on television, if not 'the' greatest day."

The taping was an experience. The moment each person realized he or she was going home with a car, the place erupted. People yelled, cried, screamed, sat down in disbelief, jumped up in joy. It was like a revival meeting turned reality show.

One person shouted: "Oprah, you're beautiful!" Then another added, "On the inside!" Another screamed: "We're blessed!"

Oprah had instructed her staff to find people who were deserving. That was important.

"So last Thursday, I'm coming back from the plant in Oregon and they're on the phone with me saying, 'We found about 57 people. We don't know if we can pull it off to get 300 (the maximum studio audience size) who desperately need cars, but we've got 57 people who desperately need cars, is that enough?' I go, 'OK, I'll go with 57.' "

"It's one of the great promotional stunts in the history of television," says Frank Brady, chairman of the mass communications department at St. John's University in New York. "It ranks with Tiny Tim getting married. People will always talk about the $7 million in cars Oprah Winfrey gave away.

"This launches her season, and it is both beneficent and brilliantly promotional."

Ellen Rakieten, the executive producer who took the job last season after being with Winfrey for 19 years as a producer, says: "It's so funny how we work. Everyone thinks we have a big master plan, but we don't. We throw out ideas until something feels good and feels right. It really needs to feel right to Oprah. We had 10 shows in the can good enough for a premiere. This just spoke to us and set the tone for the whole season."

This focus on fun kicked in when Winfrey turned 50 in January, she says.

She remembers hiking up a mountain in Sun Valley one day with Diane Sawyer, who told Winfrey she would "love" being 50. And Winfrey's longtime friend Maya Angelou told her, "The 50s are everything you were meant to be."

Says Winfrey now, "It's very interesting because it's true. I think it's because there's a realization that you've already spent more time on Earth than you have left to spend. And also, everything that you have built for yourself, spiritually, emotionally, financially, all comes full circle for you."

Slim, trim and healthy

Looking at her, this seems to be true. She has battled weight all her life, and since the start of 2002, she has been losing.

"I weigh 160 pounds today." At her heaviest, in 1992, she was at 237.

This time, she's doing it for her health.

"This is what I know: If I go two days without working out, I'm in trouble."

She does a half-hour of aerobic exercise daily and alternates Pilates and weight training after it.

"I treat myself like the food, sugar, carbo addict that I am. I have to. It's still such 'work.' "

Likes to live on edge

So while she was working hard on her health back in January, she says, "I decided at my birthday that I was going to have more fun. I wanted to kick it up because I wanted to live on the edge of my life — right out there traveling on the edge of it — not play it so safe that you're predictable. That's how you age."

She realized she had been "settling" a bit. "And it's very easy to do when you're surrounded by every comfort, and everybody and everything at your disposal."

She could, after all, do whatever she wants.

"I could yacht daily," she says. "It's actually my favorite vacation in the world, and I haven't done it since 2000. But it's one of my favorite gifts to give to other people."

She barely gets through an idea without it coming back to giving.

"I have been beyond blessed," she says. "Sometimes I am sitting at my home in Santa Barbara, which is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I'm in awe of my own life. Just really in awe.

"I have a little ritual: Every time I pass the front of my house I sing 'Jesus Loves Me,' and the other day I remember I was jogging past — and now it's like a superstition — I had gotten past without saying it and went back, 'Jesus loves me! Jesus loves me!'