Born May 9, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to former Powers model Frances and ventriloquist-comedian-actor Edgar Beregn, Candice Bergen began performing on her father’s radio program at an early age and at 11 appeared with her father as a guest on Groucho Marx’s TV show, You Bet Your Life.
Not a serious student, Bergen was asked to leave the University of Pennsylvania after failing courses in art and opera in her sophomore year. She began a career as a fashion model like her mother and graced the covers of several issues of Vogue before turning to acting.
Bergen made her film debut in family friend Sidney Lumet’s 1966 film, The Group, quickly followed by the female lead in Robert Wise’s The Sand Pebbles also released that year. Her next film, 1967’s The Day the Fish Came Out was a flop but 20th Century-Fox nevertheless signed her to a seven-year contract. Announced to play the lead in that year’s Valley of the Dolls which eventually went to Barbara Parkins instead, she went to France to make her next film, Live for Life which was popular in France, but not the U.S.
Bergen’s 1968 film, The Magus was universally panned and a huge flop worldwide. 1970’s The Adventurers and Getting Straight were panned but successful at the box-office. 1970’s Solider Blue and 1971’s The Hunting Party were also panned but not successful. It took 1971’s Carnal Knowledge to resuscitate her failing early career.
Off the screen for several years, Bergen had mid-1970s success with Bite the Bullet and The Wind and the Lion. 1979’s Starting Over earned her the best reviews of her career thus far and an Oscar nomination. In 1980, she married director Louis Malle.
1981’s Rich and Famous not successful, but 1982’s Gandhi, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA, won the Oscar for Best Picture. In 1988, she began a ten-year reign as a television star with the comedy series, Murphy Brown for which she won five Emmys and 2 Golden Globes.
Louis Malle died in 1995 after which she stopped acting for a while. The widowed actress married real-estate developer Marshall Rose in 2000 and returned to acting.
Featured in such films as 2000’s Miss Congeniality and 2001’s Sweet Home Alabama, she made well-received guest star appearances on such TV series as Will & Grace, Sex and the City, and Law & Order before joining the cast of Boston Legal from 2005-2008.
Back on screen, Bergen showed up in two of the worst films of 2008, Sex and the City reprising her role from the TV series, and The Women, the dreadful remake of the 1939 classic in which she played the role of the main characters mother, originated by Lucile Watson.
Bergen then concentrated once again on TV guest appearances, with only sporadic appearances on screen in such films as 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply, 2018’s Book Club, 2020’s Let Them All Talk, 2022’s As They Made Us, and 2023’s Book Club: The Next Chapter.
Candice Bergen remains one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars at 78.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
THE GROUP (1966), directed by Sidney Lumet
Mary McCarthy’s bestseller was such a phenomenon that the film version would probably have been a hit no matter who was cast but having the already famous Bergen leading the cast as an out lesbian in her film debut guaranteed success. Billing, which was alphabetical, didn’t mean that she was the film’s main player – she’s only in it at the beginning and end but she’s just as captivating as her more experienced co-stars, Joan Hackett, Shirley Knight, and Elizabeth Hartman, all playing former sorority members. Bergen’s more substantial role in the same year’s Oscar nominated The Sand Pebbles guaranteed continued success.
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971), directed by Mike Nichols
After her back-to-back successes with The Group and The Sand Pebbles, Bergen appeared in a series of flops unworthy of her talent before scoring once again as the main female character in now 95-year-old Jules Feiffer’s comedy-drama of the lifelong sexual obsession of college friends Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel. Bergen starts out with Garfunkel, then switches to Nicholson and back to Garfunkel who she marries. Once they’re married, Bergen’s character is sorely missed as she is often mentioned but doesn’t appear on screen any longer. Ann-Margret in an Oscar nominated performance as older Nicholson’s sexpot lover steals the rest of the film.
STARTING OVER (1979), directed by Alan J. Pakula
Bergen received her only Oscar nomination to date for playing Burt Reynolds’ self-absorbed, annoying ex-wife in the hit comedy from Dan Wakefield’s novel with a screenplay by James L. Brooks was directed by Pakula post-All the President’s Men and pre-Sophie’s Choice. The film was made as a star vehicle for Reynolds playing against type as a quiet intellectual type with Jill Clayburgh fresh from her Oscar nominated performance in An Unmarried Woman as a quirky schoolteacher that he romances between leaving and returning to Bergen who he finally leaves for good to be reunited with Clayburgh.
RICH AND FAMOUS (1981), directed by George Cukor
Cukor’s last film was a remake of 1943’s Old Acquaintance which pitted real-life feuding actresses Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins against one another. Cukor, the greatest women’s director in Hollywood history directs friends in real life, Jacqueline Bisset in Davis’ role and Bergen in Hopkins’ as the feuding women with the action moved forward several decades. With strong support from David Selby, Hart Bochner, Steven Hill, Meg Ryan as Bergen’s daughter and Matt Latanzi as Bisst’s boy toy, the film was unfairly dismissed by critics and suffered at the box-office but has since become a camp classic.
BOOK CLUB (2018), directed by Bill Holderman
One of the first and worst of the recent spate of films about old ladies rediscovering their sex drive, this one features Jane Fonda at 80, Diane Keaton and Candice Bergen at 72, and Mary Steenburgen at 65 playing women in their late 60s who are turned on by reading 50 Shades of Grey in their book club. Fonda rekindles an old romance with Don Johnson whose daughter starred in the 50 Shades films; Keaton is swept off her by feet by younger man Andy Garcia who played her nephew in The Godfather Part III; Steenburgen taps her way back to her husband, while Bergen, playing a federal court judge, gets to toss off a few zingers.
CANDICE BERGEN AND OSCAR
Starting Over (1979) – nominated – Best Supporting Actress
