Cybill Shepherd Movies and TV Shows: A Guide to the Blonde Beauty’s Most Beloved Roles
From '70s ingenue to TV veteran!
Cybill Shepherd has been a stunning screen presence for over 50 years. From her performances in some of the most iconic films of the ’70s, like The Last Picture Show, The Heartbreak Kid and Taxi Driver to her beloved TV roles in Moonlighting and Cybill, she possesses a singular spark. Her mix of classic movie star glamour and charming approachability make her forever fun to watch, and she’s had impressive staying power for someone who started out as a teen model-turned-screen ingenue. Here’s a look at the Cybill Shepherd movies and TV shows that best capture her enduring star power.
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The ’70s ingenue
Cybill Shepherd was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1950. Her distinctive name came from her parents’ decision to combine the names of her grandpa and her dad — Cy and Bill. The young Cybill started out as a teen model and beauty queen in the ’60s, and by the early ’70s she was appearing regularly on magazine covers.
One of Shepherd’s Glamour covers proved pivotal to her career, as it caught the eye of director Peter Bogdanovich. As soon as he saw her cover, he knew he found the perfect girl to play Jacy, the female protagonist in his 1971 film The Last Picture Show. The movie, shot in moody black-and-white and centered on a group of teens in ’50s Texas, was acclaimed for its poignant performances, and it was an auspicious debut for Shepherd, who proved herself to be a natural onscreen.
The Last Picture Show didn’t just turn Shepherd into an in-demand actress, it also had a major impact on her personal life. She and Bogdanovich started an affair during the film’s production, and were in a relationship until 1978.
Bogdanovich saw Shepherd as a muse, and he cast her in many of his movies, including the 1974 literary adaptation Daisy Miller and the 1975 musical At Long Last Love, neither of which was nearly as well-received as their first collaboration. After they broke up, she appeared in two more of his movies, Texasville, a 1990 sequel to The Last Picture Show, and She’s Funny That Way, a 2014 screwball comedy.
Shepherd’s next movie after The Last Picture Show was The Heartbreak Kid, a dark 1972 comedy directed by Elaine May, one of the few female filmmakers in Hollywood at that time. The actress played a beautiful young woman who catches the eye of a man on his honeymoon, leading to inevitably cringe-inducing consequences for his new marriage.
Shepherd then had one of her most enduring roles when she played Robert De Niro‘s love interest in the gritty 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. Her character, Betsy, a polished political campaign volunteer, stands in stark contrast to De Niro’s erratic and violent Travis Bickle, and the scene in which he takes her on an ill-advised date to a porn theater is one of one of the film’s most memorable moments.
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Taxi Driver is often regarded among the greatest films of all time, but Shepherd’s next few movies, including the 1976 crime comedy Special Delivery, the 1978 caper Silver Bears and the 1979 Alfred Hitchcock remake The Lady Vanishes weren’t particularly successful. As the ’70s came to a close and the ’80s began, Shepherd would have a welcome career revival.
Cybill Shepherd movies and TV shows of the ’80s
In the ’80s, Shepherd reinvented herself as a TV actress. In 1983, she starred in the Western soap opera The Yellow Rose, which was canceled after just one season. Her next show, Moonlighting, which ran five seasons from 1985 to 1989, was a big hit that brought her back to the spotlight. Shepherd played a former model who finds herself running a struggling detective agency, while the then up-and-coming Bruce Willis played the investigator who works with her.
Moonlighting earned Shepherd two Golden Globes and won over a loyal audience thanks to its classic comedic charm and the fabulous chemistry between the two stars. After many years of not being available to watch, Moonlighting finally began streaming for the very first time on Hulu in 2023, putting the show back in the cultural conversation and introducing it to a new generation of fans.
Cybill the sitcom star
Shepherd spent more time in TV than movies in the ’80s. In 1989, she starred in the rom-com Chances Are and she appeared in Alice (1990), Married to It (1991) and Once Upon a Crime (1992) in the early ’90s. She also acted in a variety of TV movies.
In 1995, 10 years after Moonlighting premiered, Shepherd landed her own sitcom, Cybill, which ran until 1998. In the show, Shepherd played an exaggerated version of herself — an eccentric middle-aged actress unafraid to tell it like it is while trying to figure out her career and personal life. The show was praised for the honesty and humor Shepherd brought to her role.
Cybill after Cybill
Post-Cybill, Shepherd wrote a tell-all memoir, cleverly titled Cybill Disobedience, in 2000, and played Martha Stewart in two early ’00s TV movies. She then appeared in the final three seasons of the edgy drama The L Word and the short-lived fantasy series Eastwick. She was also in The Client List, a 2010 Lifetime movie that became a TV series in 2012.
Cybill Shepherd movies and TV shows in the ’10s comprised a handful of lower-profile and indie projects, among them Annie and the Gypsy (2012), Do You Believe (2015), Being Rose (2017) and Love Is Love Is Love (2020). Most recently, in 2023, she starred in the Lifetime true crime movie How to Murder Your Husband, playing a writer-turned-murderer. In an interview, she called it “one of the most difficult things I’ve ever taken on.”
Shepherd has clearly come a long way from her cover girl days, and her transformation from ’70s starlet to ’80s and ’90s small screen leading lady to modern-day TV movie veteran has been fascinating to watch.
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