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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Cybill Shepherd

American actress

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ175142
Source-derived summary

Cybill Lynne Shepherd (born February 18, 1950) is an American actress, singer, and former model. Her film debut and breakthrough role came as Jacy Farrow in Peter Bogdanovich's coming-of-age drama The Last Picture Show (1971). Her collaborations with Bogdanovich continued with lead roles in the period piece Daisy Miller (1974), the musical At Long Last Love (1975), and the The Last Picture Show sequel Texasville (1990). She also had roles as Kelly in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Betsy in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Corinne Jeffries in the romantic fantasy comedy Chances Are (1989), and Nancy in Woody Allen's Alice (1990).

On television, her first major role was as Colleen Champion in the one season of the night-time drama The Yellow Rose (1983). Shepherd played Madelyn Hayes on the detective comedy-drama Moonlighting (1985–1989) opposite Bruce Willis, for which she won two Golden Globes for Best Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy out of three such nominations. She later starred as Cybill Sheridan on Cybill (1995–1998), for which she won her third Golden Globe Award as Best Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy. Her later television roles included Phyllis Kroll on The L Word (2007–2009), Madeleine Spencer on Psych (2008–2013), Cassie in the television film The Client List (2010), and Linette Montgomery on The Client List (2012–2013).

Early life

Shepherd was born February 18, 1950, in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the second of three children.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cybill Shepherd” is american actress. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cybill, Shepherd and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1971, 1974, 1975—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cybill, Shepherd and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american actress” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q175142. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1971, 1974 and 1975.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cybill Shepherd”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cybill Shepherd primary sources, Cybill Shepherd archive and Cybill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cybill Shepherd”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cybill Shepherd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.