Candice Bergen was born on May 9, 1946, in Beverly Hills, California.

The daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and model Frances Westerman Bergen, Bergen started her career as part of her father's act alongside his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd.

She began modeling as a teenager before graduating and going into acting with the 1966 film The Group.

She received an Oscar nomination for her role in the 1982 film Gandhi. She is, perhaps, best known for her title role on the sitcom Murphy Brown. She won five Emmys for the show, which ran for 10 seasons. She also co-starred with William Shatner on ABC's Boston Legal starting in 2005.

Bergen gained critical success for her work in several films, including with Carnal Knowledge (1971); Starting Over (1979), for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award; and Gandhi (1982).

In 1988, she found her niche in the politically-charged sitcom Murphy Brown (1988-'98), and launched the role for which she would become most famous. Bergen as Murphy, the independent, sarcastic, liberal anchorwoman, earned eight Emmy nominations, and won five times (in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1995).

The show and its title character became nationally infamous in 1992, when Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the single mother TV character for being a poor role model.

Her portrayal of Murphy as a hard-hitting journalist was so convincing that after Murphy Brown ended, Bergen was considered by the real-life TV news show 60 Minutes for a position as a correspondent. It might not have been a bad fit, as she is an accomplished photojournalist whose work has appeared in magazines such as Life and Playboy. Bergen published her memoir, Knock Wood, in 1984.

In 2000, Bergen began hosting her own talk show, Exhale with Candice Bergen, on Oxygen, the women's cable network founded by Oprah Winfrey, among others.

It was later cancelled, but she didn't stay off the air for long. Bergen returned to television on the ABC comedy Boston Legal starring opposite William Shatner and James Spader in 2005. Playing a high-powered attorney, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her work on the series in 2006.

Candice Bergen was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2010.