Stefanie Powers admits she’s had some fortunate luck. In the late 1970s, she was committed to a production of Cyrano de Bergerac that was headed to Broadway when New York’s newspapers went on strike — freeing her up to star in the TV pilot of Hart to Hart. “When newspaper strikes would happen, no play would come from out of town because there was no way to publicize them,” she exclusively explains to Closer. “I will be forever grateful to whichever union caused the strike and allowed me to work on the pilot.”
From 1979 to 1984, Stefanie and Robert Wagner played Jennifer and Jonathan Hart, a glamorous couple who solved mysteries among the world’s jet set. “I had worked with Robert before,” says Stefanie, who describes their relationship as like siblings. “When we were working together, sometimes we would get into laughing fits and they’d have to send us home.”
Stefanie’s friendship with Robert began in her starlet days. She knew both his late wife, Natalie Wood, and Jill St. John, his spouse of the past 34 years, even longer. In adolescence, the women all took ballet class together. “Los Angeles in the 1950s was like growing up in a small town,” Stefanie, 82, explains. “It was an industry town, and everybody knew everybody. There wasn’t a set I walked on as a teenager where I didn’t know someone.”
After many small roles in films, Stefanie’s big break occurred when she was cast as a secret agent on TV’s The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. “We made 29 episodes a year, which is almost unheard of in today’s world,” she says. Although the show wasn’t picked up for a second season, it was a great experience. “It was an incredible training ground. We had Boris Karloff playing in drag in ‘The Mother Muffin Affair’ [episode],” she says. “It was such a treat to work with him.”
At 19, Stefanie was introduced to Oscar-winning actor William Holden at a dinner party. After many meet-cute moments over the years, they began a romance in 1972 that lasted until his death in 1981. “We both had curiosities about people, places, history, art and wildlife,” she explains. “In pursuit of all of those interests, we traveled extensively.” She made her first life-changing trip to Kenya with the Stalag 17 actor early in their romance. “Every place we went eventually played some part in my future,” she relates in her 2011 memoir, One From the Hart. “A new world that would restructure my life and, in some cases, change the course of my focus and priorities.”
Kenya, where Stefanie maintains a home and runs the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, was the backdrop of many of her most romantic times with Bill. “One of the sides we shared the most was our love of Africa and just being outdoors and sleeping under the sky, tracking animals, catching them, shipping them to the zoos and parks all over the world,” she recalls. “It was a sort of real-life adventure. The things that people read about, we did.”
But one night in Los Angeles, Bill went into convulsions following a night of drinking. Stefanie summoned help, likely saving his life, but placing herself at a crossroads. Well-meaning friends warned her not to link her destiny to someone struggling with alcoholism. In the end, she guessed that maybe she was too “stubborn” to give up on Bill. “I opted to stay the course.”
There were more tears, but also very good times. “For about six of the nine years that we were together, he was sober,” Stefanie explains. “It was the longest period of time in his adult life that he was sober. That was very meaningful for him and meaningful for me.”
In 1981, Stefanie was enjoying the greatest success of her career on Hart to Hart when Bill died after hitting his head during a binge. This time, Stefanie, who was en route from filming in Hawaii, wasn’t there to save him. “That was a very, very tragic period,” admits Stefanie, whose costar Robert lost his wife Natalie the same year. “We held each other up,” she says.
Stefanie still enjoys flexing her acting muscles in the theater, where she has played Anna in The King and I and Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Of course, Bill famously played screenwriter Joe Gillis in the 1950 film version with Gloria Swanson. Does Stefanie think he would approve of her playing the has-been, delusional Norma? “I’m sure Bill and I would have had a good laugh,” Stefanie says. “How things come around.”
She really loves the immediacy of working in theater. “After the curtain goes up, no one can say, ‘Cut, I’ve got a hair in the lens,’” she says. “You have a beginning, a middle and an end every night. Eight times a week. Also, I get to do many more varied roles in theater than I would get a chance to do on film. It’s very challenging and often rewarding.”
Sadly, she and Robert have no desire to do another Hart to Hart television movie. “No, we put the period at the end of that sentence when we did eight two-hour movies in the 1990s,” she says.
Stefanie founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation shortly after Bill’s passing. “Our mission statement for the charity is wildlife conservation through education and alternatives to habitat destruction,” she explains.
The Kenya-based organization provides a wide variety of programs to teach people how to adopt more environmentally supportive practices in farming and rural life. “In the last 25 years, we’ve been serving about 11,000 students a year,” she says. “We usually rebuild their schools, install books, charts and education programs about biodiversity and how it affects their lives.”
Many conservationists believe that the African continent may hold the key to several global climate change solutions. “The hardcore truth is that electric cars are not going to change the climate,” says Stefanie. “What is going to change the climate is a reimagining of the overexploited factory farming system that the world is engaged in. We have cut down the green belt to such an extent that balance no longer exists.”
She’s been moved as villages once seen as unsustainable begin to flourish again. “To see people who were starving now living off the land that they thought was dead is quite rewarding,” she says. “I’d like people to know that there is worthwhile work going on and it’s working — which is some very positive news.”
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