Candice Bergen Declares Herself ‘Fat’ — ‘I Am A Champion Eater,’ Says ‘Murphy Brown’ Star
Candice Bergen, the beloved star of the long-running sitcom Murphy Brown, declares herself “fat” in her new book, due to hit stores and online outlets such as Amazon on April 7. But the 68-year-old one-time big screen “ice queen” also says she has no regrets — in fact, she is happy eating whatever she wants and whatever she can get her hands on.
The above photo comparison shows Candice Bergen as she appeared 15 years ago, just two years after the end of Murphy Brown, on the left. On the right is Bergen as she appears today.
She asserts in her new autobiography, A Fine Romance, that she has packed on 30 pounds in the intervening years — and couldn’t give a hoot what anyone thinks about it.
“I live to eat. None of this ‘eat to live’ stuff for me. I am a champion eater. No carb is safe — no fat, either,” Bergen, the daughter of famed 1940s-1950s-era ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, announces in the autobiography.
“At a recent dinner party I shared bread and olive oil, followed by chocolate ice cream with my husband. A woman near me looked at me, appalled, and I thought, ‘I don’t care.'”
Candice Bergen has been a Hollywood star since she was a young girl, appearing as a guest on her father’s then-popular radio show in 1952 when she was just 6-years-old.
Among the initial film roles that elevated her to the movie industry’s “A-list,” she played a seductive college student who causes a split between two close friends played by Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in the 1971 Mike Nichols-directed drama Carnal Knowledge — a film well ahead of its time in its characters’ frank discussion of their sexual habits and issues.
But Candice Bergen’s svelte, Nordic beauty — she is descended from Swedish grandparents — gave her a cool, aloof persona that could sometimes be off-putting to audiences. That all changed when she ventured into TV sitcom territory as the feisty title character in Murphy Brown.
Maintaining the trim physique that was integral to her on-screen personality no longer holds any interest for her, she writes in the book.
“Let me just come right out and say it: I am fat,” Bergen declares. “Dieting is out of my purview. I crave cookies.?.?. all the things that dilate my pupils.”
Candice Bergen goes to on to explain that she would much rather be, as she says, “fat” than follow the example of many of her rail-thin friends who, she says, “maintain their weight by routinely vomiting after major meals consisting of a slice of steak or a filet of fish. I am incapable of this.”
[Images/Kevin Winter/Scott Olson/Getty Images]
