Cybill Shepherd

Cybill Lynne Shepherd (born February 18, 1950 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American actress.

At age sixteen Cybill Shepherd won the 1966 "Miss Teenage Memphis" contest that landed her modelling work through high school and after. Film director Peter Bogdanovich spotted her on the cover of a magazine and offered her a role in The Last Picture Show (1971). During the filming, the then 20-year-old began an affair with Bogdanovich but she left him in 1972 and went to Las Vegas where she rekindled a relationship with Elvis Presley that begun after an introduction in their hometown of Memphis. Years later in an interview with E! television Shepherd spoke of the relationship with Presley saying "He was a wonderful lover, very sexy." However, in a candid 2002 interview on Larry King Live, she told King that "The Elvis that I got to know in Memphis was very different than the Elvis that I got to know later, like in Las Vegas. I just noticed that he was unavailable in a way. And then later on, and years, years later, I wound read and find out that he had like two other women there at the same time."

During Shepherd's time with Presley, Bogdanovich continued to pursue her and when the relationship with Presley ended, the infatuated Bogdanovich gave her the starring role in his 1974 film, Daisy Miller. Based on the Henry Miller novella, the nature of Shepherd's role required a seasoned actress and both her performance and the film were panned by the critics and it proved to be a box office failure. Unfortunately, before Daisy Miller was released filming was already underway on At Long Last Love and the second Bogdanovich production with Shepherd in the lead role proved a major and humiliating disaster that seriously impaired both of their careers.

Shepherd did receive good reviews for her work in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) but after a series of flops, she left show business in 1978 after completing filming on the less than successful The Lady Vanishes and moved back to Memphis were she quickly married. Her retun to the screen in 1980s The Return was another catastrophe that seemed to spell the end of her acting career. However, after an absence of several years, Shepherd auditioned and won a co-starring role opposite Bruce Willis in the television series, Moonlighting. A lighthearted combination of mystery and comedy, Shepherd two Golden Globe awards for her role as Maddie Hayes on the popular show.

In the 1990s she starred in Cybill, a television sitcom in which the title character was roughly modelled on herself: an actress struggling with hammy parts in B movies and bad soaps, a role for which she won her third Golden Globe award.

In 2001, Shepherd published her memoirs "Cybill Disobedience" (How I Survived Beauty Pageants, Elvis, Sex, Bruce Willis, Lies, Marriage, Motherhood, Hollywood, and the Irrepressible Urge to Say What I Think.)

Filmography:

• Open Window (2005)
• Marine Life (2000)
• The Muse (1999)
• The Last Word (aka Cosa Nostra: The Last Word) (1994)
• Once Upon a Crime... (1992)
• Married to It (1991)
• Alice (1990)
• Texasville (1990)
• Chances Are (1989)
• The Return (aka The Alien's Return aka Earthright) (1980)
• Americathon (1979) (minor appearance)
• The Lady Vanishes (1979) (remake of a Hitchcock classic)
• Silver Bears (1977)
• Special Delivery (aka Dangerous Break) (1976)
• Taxi Driver (1976)
• At Long Last Love (1975)
• Daisy Miller (1974)
• The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
• The Last Picture Show (1971)

Her autobiography (written in collaboration with Aimee Lee Ball) is punningly entitled Cybill Disobedience (ISBN 0061030147).