Candice Patricia Bergen (born May 9, 1946) is an American actress and former
fashion model, best known for her starring role on the
television situation comedy Murphy Brown. She won five
Emmy Awards and two
Golden Globe Awards as Best Actress in a TV Comedy for that role. She's also well-known for her role on the
legal comedy-drama Boston Legal as
Shirley Schmidt. She was nominated twice for an
Emmy and once for a
Golden Globe and
Screen Actors Guild Award respectively for this role. She has starred in major films including
The Sand Pebbles,
Carnal Knowledge,
The Wind and the Lion, and
Gandhi, receiving an
Oscar nomination for her role in
Starting Over.
Early life
Bergen was born in
Beverly Hills, California. Her mother,
Frances Bergen (
née Westerman), was a
Powers model who was known professionally as Frances Westcott.
[Candice Bergen Biography (1946-)] Her father,
Edgar Bergen, was a
ventriloquist, comedian, and actor. Her paternal grandparents were
Swedish-born immigrants who
anglicized their surname. As a child, Bergen was irritated at being referred to as
Charlie McCarthy's little sister, Charlie McCarthy being her father's star dummy.
["So when I was born, it was only natural that I was known in the press not as Candice Bergen, but as "Charlie's sister."" (Bergen, "My Dad, Charlie and Me' in Jack Canfield, et al., A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul 1998:36]
