Whoopi says her name just sort of 'picked me'

Caryn Johnson didn't pick the name Whoopi.

"It picked me," the actress now known as Whoopi Goldberg explained while accepting the American Film Institute's Star Award during the eighth annual U.S. Comedy Festival on Saturday.

"I get gassy," Goldberg said. She recalled a friend telling her, "You're like a whoopee cushion."

The name stuck, but her career didn't really take off until, at the suggestion of her mother, she added Goldberg.

"It did something. It sort of changed people's attitudes" about her, she told newsman Ed Bradley, who conducted the on-stage interview.

"I don't look like Halle Berry. But chances are, she's going to end up looking like me," Goldberg said.