Candice Bergen Biography

As the first child of popular radio ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen, and his young wife Frances, Candice was a news item months before her birth.

She made her first public appearance as an infant, featured with her parents in a magazine advertisement.

Before she was ten, Candice was appearing sporadically on her father’s radio program, demonstrating a precocious ability to throw her own voice.

However, she rebelled against the conservatism of her parents and adopted a well-publicised, free-wheeling lifestyle, and a movie career. In her first film, 'The Group', in 1965, Candice played a wealthy young lesbian.

She next appeared with Steve McQueen in the big budget 'The Sand Pebbles'; unfortunately, she was not popular with critics, who commented that Candice looked far better than she acted. This reputation endured throughout most of her film appearances of the late 1960s. Even Candice admitted she wasn't much of an actress, though she claimed she was terrific when required to fake an orgasm.

Candice decided to take her career more seriously than did her critics, and emerged as a talented and reliable actress in such films as 'Carnal Knowledge' and 'The Wind and the Lion'. Her true turnaround was her performance as a woman pursuing a singing career, in the Burt Reynolds comedy, 'Starting Over'.

She married the French film director, Louis Malle, and her career gained momentum with ever-improving movie and TV roles. In 1988, Candice began a run in the title role of the 'Murphy Brown' television sitcom role that won her several Emmy Awards.

The role also restored her to headline status in 1992, when, in direct response to the fictional Murphy Brown's decision to become a single mother, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered his notorious "family values" speech.