Candice Bergen

Bergen called it a "movie out of the 1940s."

Candice Patricia Bergen (born May 9, 1946) is an American actress.

Candice Patricia Bergen was born May 9, 1946, at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles, California.

Her mother, Frances Bergen (née Westerman), was a Powers model known professionally as Frances Westcott.

Her father, Edgar Bergen, was a ventriloquist, comedian, and actor.

Bergen's paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants who anglicized their surname, which was originally Berggren ("mountain branch").

Bergen was raised in Beverly Hills, California, and attended the Harvard-Westlake School.

As a child, she was irritated when described as "Charlie McCarthy's little sister" (a reference to her father's star dummy).

She began appearing on her father's radio program at a young age and in 1958, at age 11, was a guest with her father on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life, as Candy Bergen.

She said she wanted to be a clothing designer when she grew up.

She later attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she was elected Homecoming Queen and Miss University but, as Bergen later acknowledged, she did not take her education seriously.

After failing two courses in art and opera, she was asked to leave at the end of her sophomore year.

Bergen began her career as a fashion model and appeared on the cover of Vogue before she made her screen debut in the film The Group (1966).

She starred in The Sand Pebbles (1966), Soldier Blue (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), and The Wind and the Lion (1975).

Bergen made her screen debut playing a university student in the ensemble film The Group (1966), directed by Sidney Lumet, who knew Bergen's family.

The film delicately touched on the subject of lesbianism and was a critical and financial success.

Afterwards, Bergen left college to focus on her career.

She played the role of Shirley Eckert, an assistant school teacher, in The Sand Pebbles (1966) with Steve McQueen.

The movie was nominated for several Academy Awards and was a financial success.

It was made for 20th Century Fox.

She guest-starred on an episode of Coronet Blue, whose director Sam Wanamaker recommended her for the comedy The Day the Fish Came Out (1967) directed by Michael Cacoyannis, distributed by Fox.

The film was a box-office flop, but Fox nevertheless signed her to a long-term contract.

Bergen was announced for the role of Anne in Valley of the Dolls, but did not appear in the film.

Bergen went to France to appear in Claude Lelouch's romantic drama Live for Life (1967) opposite Yves Montand, popular in France but not the US.

In 1968, she played the leading female role in The Magus, a British mystery film for Fox starring Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn that was almost universally ridiculed and was another major flop.

She played a frustrated socialite in a 1970 political satire, The Adventurers, based on a novel by Harold Robbins.

Her salary was $200,000.

The film received negative reviews, and while it did respectable box-office, it did not help her career.

Bergen played Elliott Gould's girlfriend in Getting Straight (1970), a counterculture movie which drew another spate of bad reviews but was commercially profitable.

She said it took her career in "a new direction... my first experience with democratic, communal movie making."

She also starred in the controversial Western Soldier Blue (1970), an overseas success but a failure in America, perhaps because of its unflattering portrayal of the U.S. Cavalry.

In films, Bergen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Starting Over (1979) and for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Gandhi (1982).

She made her Broadway debut in the 1984 play Hurlyburly and starred in the revivals of The Best Man (2012) and Love Letters (2014).

She won five Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for her portrayal of the title character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown (1988–1998, 2018).

She ultimately received an honorary doctorate from Penn in May 1992.

Before taking up acting, Bergen was a fashion model and was featured on Vogue covers.

She received acting training at HB Studio in New York City.

Her other film roles include Miss Congeniality (2000), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), The Women (2008), Bride Wars (2009), Book Club (2018) and Let Them All Talk (2020).

From 2002 to 2004, she appeared in three episodes of the HBO series Sex and the City.

She is also known for her role as Shirley Schmidt on the ABC drama Boston Legal (2005–2008).