Candice Bergen Had a Stroke, Still Suffers From Memory Loss
Candice Bergen suffered a stroke in 2006, and she's only now talking about it.
The former "Murphy Brown" star told New York Magazine that she kept the stroke a secret because "I just don't want it to be a liability." While she only took two weeks off her job on ABC's "Boston Legal" to recover, now, six years later, "my memory is just … It's not quite the same."
Bergen, 65, has had other health problems as well. Five months ago, she broke her pelvis while riding a bike. She mused, "now I can fall and I'll break." She's also come to terms with her decidedly un-plasticized appearance."The reality is that I don't look like I used to look," she said. "I just don't care enough, and in a way it's saved me."
Bergen is making her Broadway debut in "Gore Vidal's The Best Man." While she was nervous about doing theater - "I had no confidence in my memory," she said - she's now "so grateful" that she took on the challenge.
Bergen is the latest star to open up about a secret illness. Earlier this month, Kathy Bates told Anderson Cooper that she kept her ovarian cancer diagnosis a secret because she was contracted to do a movie at the time. "Modern Family's" Sofia Vergara told Health magazine that she hid her 2000 thyroid cancer diagnosis because "you don't want to deal with anything else while you're going through it."
