The elegant and beautiful Candice Bergen was born on 9 May, 1946, amidst Hollywood glamour in Beverly Hills. She first tasted fame when she was an infant and appeared with her parents in a magazine advertisement. Then at the age of eleven, when her ventriloquist father asked her to join him on his radio show, she happily complied.
Candice Bergen studied at the Westlake School for Girls before moving to Washington and then a finishing school in Switzerland. Though she grew up in the lap of luxury she still had to finance her hobby of photography by modelling. She began modelling for Ford and, with the money earned from these assignments, she eventually bought the necessary camera equipment that later helped her become a photo-journalist.
Bergen received a few film offers. One of these was a highly acclaimed Sidney Lumet film, The Group (1966). In it, she played the part of a lesbian. Though the role was radical and way ahead of its time, Candice did not receive good reviews for her performance. She next appeared in another major award winning film, The Sand Pebbles (1966).
Having received no encouragement from audiences and critics, who dubbed her wooden, Bergen decided to go back to photography. She became a photo-journalist and a photographer and published her work in various magazines. In Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1992), she played the part of a famous photographer.
However, despite a poor start to her career in films (she admitted herself that she might not be a great actress), Bergen decided to give films a go again and switched to the comedy genre. Her role in the Burt Reynolds’ film Starting Over (1979) won her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also won good reviews for her roles in Carnal Knowledge (1971) and The Wind and the Lion (1975).
Bergen’s other achievements include the television series Murphy Brown , in which she plays a television reporter. She received five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes for the series. Her popularity reached new heights following the publicity that followed Vice-President Dan Quayle’s criticism of her portrayal of an unmarried single mother. As a result of her new success, she received a variety of offers which were rather different from her earlier films.
Bergen was married to the French director Louis Malle who was fourteen years older than her. They had a child and remained married till his death in 1995. Bergen came back to her film career with Miss Congeniality (2000), Sweet Home Alabama (2002) and The In-Laws (2003) and also starred in another television series, Boston Legal.
Bergen is now married to real estate developer Marshall Rose.
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