Latifah thanks Oprah for smoking help

Queen Latifah has attributed an episode of Oprah Winfrey's talk show with helping her to finally quit smoking.

The actress and rapper is a devoted viewer of the programme and was shocked into taken action against her damaging habit after seeing a presentation given by one of Winfrey's guests, Dr Mehmet Oz.

Speaking to Contactmusic, she remembered: "He brought all these organs and I was struggling to quit smoking around this time, really mentally struggling with it, physically struggling with it. I was up to, like, a pack-and-a-half a day, sometimes two packs a day."

"He [Oz] showed a healthy lung and then he showed a lung that had lung cancer. It definitely was frightening to me; it was from then on that I really knew I had to figure out some way to put the pack down," the Chicago star continued.

She added: "Half of it was to make my mother proud, to be able to have a child, to kind of feel proud of myself. I hope to never smoke again. I like myself as a non-smoker. That episode of Oprah may have, quite possibly, saved my life."