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Class Act
You first notice her beauty, which is of the striking variety, the kind that makes heads turn. You expect the public persona: self-assured, intelligent and coy, but away from the cameras, her strong stance softens. With her shoes off and her feet up, Candice Bergen -- Charlie McCarthy's sister, vaudeville ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's daughter, director Louis Malle's widow, Murphy Brown -- becomes a woman on the backside of 55. A mother, a new wife, a career changer. And, perhaps most important, a person content to see herself as still a work in progress.In an extraordinarily busy life, Bergen has it all, or nearly so. After sharing a place on her father's knee with his wooden dummy, she claimed her own fame before turning 20 as a Ford cover-girl model. A film career beckoned, and she held memorable roles in movies including Carnal Knowledge and Starting Over, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She traveled the world, toying with a second career as a photojournalist on assignment for Life and Esquire. For 10 years beginning in 1988 she played the TV character Murphy Brown, a feisty single-mom news anchor, earning five Emmy Awards and a place in sitcom history.
On the personal side, Bergen has poured all her talents into her role as mother to Chloe, her daughter with Malle, who died of lymphoma in 1995. Today, as Chloe prepares to leave the nest, her mom has begun again to redefine herself. In 2000, she married New York real estate developer Marshall Rose. She launched a talk show on the Oxygen cable network, and this year takes her interviewing skills into the field with Candice Checks It Out. This month she appears in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. In one of the movie's more memorable scenes, Reese Witherspoon, who plays a woman engaged to Bergen's son, slugs her -- smack on the kisser.
RD: Have you ever been decked before in a movie?
Bergen: I've been shot, mauled and abused -- but never by a woman.
RD: What's it like to work with the younger generation of film actresses?
Bergen: These women are so on top of it. I think of what a screw-up I was in my 20s. Reese is so professional and what is she? Twenty-six? She's talented and backs it up by really being prepared. It's impressive.
RD: By the time you were 26, you'd done a million things. You were pretty impressive too.
Bergen: I was all over the place, and I think a lot lately about how I would have done it differently if I had been more focused instead of squandering opportunities and wasting time. I've had such a rich and interesting life, and I wouldn't swap that. I just think I shouldn't have been so half-assed about everything.
RD: But you've had such an interesting life, starting with Charlie. Do you have a version of him in your home today?
Bergen: He's in the Smithsonian, but I have collections of Charlie McCarthy spoons and tin cars and toys.
RD: And you think of him fondly, or do you hate his guts?
Bergen: He always was referred to as my brother and was a figure larger than life in my house. Whenever I'm hard on myself, I say, "Not everyone had this situation to grow up in, and it's probably a miracle that you're putting one foot in front of the other."
RD: So it was dealing with him that was so difficult, more than just growing up in the public eye?
Bergen: I don't think being in the public eye is good for a kid in any way, and I think parents should go to great lengths to avoid putting kids in the public eye. It gives you that bogus sense of entitlement. It's similar to when kids are little and have a birthday party. They get all these presents and all this attention and they go nuts and crash and burn and behave like they've been invaded by an alien. It's hard enough to be my age and try and have some perspective on it.
RD: I know you've tried to protect Chloe from that. Tell us about her.
Bergen: She's passionate and funny and has a tremendous social consciousness, a great sense of humor. She's intellectually curious and excessively creative. Just has lots of strings in her bow.
RD: She's 16 now. Have the teen years been difficult?
Bergen: No. Since it's been the two of us, we've been very, very close. Usually girls act out against their mothers, but she went easier on me. I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop, but she's been great.
RD: She'll go to college soon. Will you suffer empty-nest syndrome?
Bergen: Ha! I have it now. I just dropped her off in France and steeled myself, because she's going to be away for six weeks. She's never gone away to sleep-away camp, and neither of us wanted her to go to boarding school. I could tell she was nervous about me taking her to the airport because I cry at anything with her. So I got it out the night before while she was asleep. In the morning, I was completely cool, dry-eyed, and sent her off.
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