& SHAKERS
Stefanie Powers: Her Heart Belongs to Africa
t isn’t merely that Stefanie Powers is modest about her impressive acting re- sume’, one that began with her having been under contract at Columbia Pictures for five years beginning at age 16 and in- cludes dozens of theatricals, more than 20 TV miniseries and 100 TV guest appear- ances and starring roles in “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and “Hart to Hart” opposite Robert Wagner in the 1980s.
I No, it goes far deeper than that.
If you ask Powers about her accom- plishments and to rank her greatest thrills, she is likely to say – as she did recently during an interview – “I don’t feel like what I’ve done are ‘accomplishments.’ I never look back. Life is just an ongoing process. So much of what I’m involved with is ongoing, particularly with conser- vation. There is so much to do. So many vulnerable creatures that need protec- tion.”
Powers is speaking, of course, about
her devotion to animal preservation and protection, conservation and the environ- ment. It’s a cause that is not only close to her heart; it’s her heart, period. It’s part of the woman’s very DNA. The philanthropic work at the core of
Powers’ life surrounds her running the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, a public charity that she co-founded in 1982 and for which she continues to serve as president. Started in the memory of the great actor Holden – a conservationist in his own right – it carries on the important works that were the passion of Holden (Powers’ companion at the time of his death in 1981). To say that Powers is more than merely
a figurehead for the foundation www.
whwf.org would be one of the century’s great understatements. At 67, she still spends several months a year at a game ranch in Kenya that she had built and fin- ished in 1985. She has lived in Kenya on and off since 1973. “We hold and preserve 37 species of East African wildlife,” she announces
72 PROFESSIONAL WOMAN’S MULTICULTURAL MAGAZINE
Crown Features Syndicate™ with pride. “I handle all of the expenses for the foundation’s operation out of my own pocket. When I tell every donor that 100 percent of what they give us goes di- rectly to fund our works, I mean it.” It is to fund the foundation that Powers
continues to work as an actress. The slew of “Hart to Hart” made-for-TV movies in the mid-1990s, in which Powers both starred and co-produced, certainly helped. So has her work over the past de- cade portraying Anna in several produc- tions of the stage classic The King and I, first in England and then Los Ange- les. That’s not to mention her debut CD, “On the Same Page,” and her one-woman show One From the Hart. A more conventional role finds Powers co-starring at present in the Hallmark Channel in HD Original Movie “Meet My Mom,” which premiered Saturday, May 8. She portrayed the mother of a woman (Lori Loughlin) who comes along with her 10-year-old son to live with her after getting divorced. “What appealed to me most was the
strong relationship between the mother and daughter,” Powers says. “That, and it was all done in less than three weeks. Plus, it’s Hallmark Channel, which does classy projects. I’d been asked to do several of their movies over the years, but it never worked out with the schedule. I’m glad it finally did. It was a lovely opportunity to get my feet wet with them.” It also pleased Powers that the Hall-
mark Channel mission is to “tell stories relevant of today, dramas we’re encoun- tering now. And they do them in a whole- some way. They’re not trying to dig into the seamy underbelly of familial unhappi- ness. They look to the potential of rela- tionships and try to mine what’s good.” Besides the movie and her all-out com-
mitment to the conservation movement, Powers is working on a memoir that’s scheduled to be published in October by Simon & Schuster. “I’m trying frantically to finish it now,” she admits. “I had gone to New York to
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF DIVERSITY
pitch it myself and wound up going back and forth between two publishers. I feel like it’s going to be a good book. But they don’t want me to talk about what’s going to be in it. All I can say is, it won’t be any kind of kiss-and-tell thing.” Not that Powers ever has been a tab-
loid queen, or anything close. She has been married and divorced twice (the first time to actor Gary Lockwood) and had re- lationships with Holden and with “Hart to Hart” co-star Wagner, with whom she re- mains good friends. But don’t expect any thrilling anec-
dotes from Powers about her days on “H to H” – unless she’s saving them for the book. “We worked so many hours on that
show that there really wasn’t a lot of time to revel in the success and the fame,” she recalls. “There was no Internet, so we never received much public feedback, certainly not like it is today. The world was different then. Paparazzi didn’t camp out in front of your house. If you needed food at the supermarket, you went your- self. We had to live like real people.”
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