"I'm very grateful that I have that period in my life," she said. "I think the whole body of my work is enough so that people, I hope, realize that I don't just do celebrities."
In recent years, however, her career has been buffeted by a series of high-profile celebrity controversies stemming from "The View," the daytime talk show she created in 1997.
"The first nine years were very happy," Walters recalled. "Then I think things began to go sour" with co-host Star Jones.
Jones' decision to have gastric-bypass surgery and then refuse to acknowledge it put her co-hosts in an awkward position. After she had an extravagant wedding, outfitted in a part by freebies she promoted on the air, ABC decided replace her. Before the decision was public, however, Walters told a reporter that Jones was welcome to stay if she wanted to.
"I lied for Star," Walters admitted. "I tried to protect Star. And it hit me in the face."
Still, she doesn't seem worried that the incident damaged her credibility.
"I think people understood," Walters said mildly.
The following year, Rosie O'Donnell came aboard for a tempestuous stint as the show's moderator.
"That was a roller coaster, because Rosie is enormously talented, but she also has a lot of, as she admits, emotional problems," said Walters, who still exchanges e-mails with O'Donnell.
One person that Walters did not write much about is her ABC colleague and reputed archrival Diane Sawyer. When asked about their relationship, Walters notes they recently had lunch and reads out loud a warm e-mail from Sawyer on her computer.
"People will be very surprised that we have that kind of relationship," she said. "Diane and I were pitted against each other, deliberately. We hated it. . . . But we never had animosity toward one another."
Today, she said, they are "colleagues who understand each other and probably share more than most people do."
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matea.gold@latimes.com
