She became the subject of one Madame Tussaud’s wax figure. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was placed on the sidewalk outside the theater used for the Academy Awards, between the stars of television host Ryan Seacrest and pop group Destiny’s Child — an “odd arrangement” that Ms. Walters claimed “makes me am hip and hot.”
But while celebrity started to define her, it didn’t seem to bother her.
Famous people moved frequently during her childhood, courtesy of her father, Lou Walters, an immigrant from England whom she described as a “brilliant and funny impresario” who “made and lost several fortunes in show business.”
He cared for clients such as Hollywood billionaire Howard Hughes and Kennedy family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, and worked with stars such as Evelyn Nesbit, Frank Sinatra and Carol Channing. Mrs. Walters wrote that when she saw them offstage and up close, she realized that “behind these fantasy figures were real people”.
But more than most other reporters, her relationships with famous people extended into her personal life.
Mrs. Walters’ lovers included several senators and eventual Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. She went on a few dates and remained friends with Fox News executive Roger Ailes for a long time. She caused a backlash in 2014 when she defended director Woody Allen, another friend, after his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexually assaulting her as a child.
By moving at the highest levels of power, Ms. Walters also opened up to questions about her close relationships with sources. In 1987, she passed documents from Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer she had interviewed for “20/20,” to the White House – a move that was outraged by much of the journalistic community. In 1996, Mrs. Walters interviewed composer Andrew Lloyd Webber for “20/20,” but failed to reveal that she had invested $100,000 in producing his musical “Sunset Boulevard” on Broadway. ABC News admonished her about the surveillance.
“It won’t happen again,” she said in a statement.
She was also criticized for what many saw as softball questions and overly rosy portrayals. In 2011, Ms Walters described Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who had spent years violently suppressing dissent, as “widely seen as a fresh pragmatic leader, a doctor whose life was to heal people”, before she jested about his time spent as “a dictator and a tyrant.”
