Stefanie Powers

The Name Columbia Didn't Want

Stefanie Zofya Paul walked into the offices of Columbia Pictures at fifteen and walked out with a five-year contract in hand. Studio executives immediately decided her Polish surname wouldn't work at the box office of the era. So she was renamed Stefanie Powers by direct studio order.

In 1962, she filmed The Interns, and critics took notice of a young woman who spoke six languages with ease. But Hollywood didn't quite know where to place an actress who seemed too intelligent for ingenue roles. The studio system preferred more compliant and less athletic types.

It was the industry's first major blunder.

Television gave her the space that movies systematically denied her. In 1966, she took the lead in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., playing April Dancer. She was the first woman to star in a spy series in prime time, but NBC canceled the project after a single season due to poor ratings.

From Weekly Mystery to Refuge in Kenya

Powers didn't stop after that premature setback. During the 1970s she moved from set to set, taking part in nearly every major hit. She worked on McCloud, Kung Fu and The Bionic Woman while waiting for the role that would define her public image with international audiences.

In 1979, Jennifer Hart arrived.

The chemistry with Robert Wagner in Hart to Hart felt so natural that millions of viewers believed they were married in real life. They shot 110 episodes, and the series stayed on the air until 1984. Powers' salary reached record figures for a woman in television during those five seasons of mystery and luxury in California.

But her private life followed a much more modest and committed path. Her relationship with actor William Holden changed her priorities away from the spotlight. After Holden's death in 1981, she personally took charge of managing his conservation legacy in Africa.

And she never stopped working.

She founded the William Holden Wildlife Foundation in Kenya and began dividing her time between filming and protecting endangered species. In 1982, she received her first Emmy nomination, proving she could balance activism with a demanding professional career in Los Angeles.

Staying Power on Stage

Theater allowed her to step away from the camera and explore drier, more restrained roles starting in the 1990s. In 2002, she returned to the London stage to star in the musical The King and I, earning very favorable reviews. Because Powers always preferred the discipline of live performance to the nostalgia of TV reruns.

In 2010, she published her memoir, One from the Hart. In its pages she detailed the aesthetic pressure of the major studios and how she survived lung cancer diagnosed in 2008. The actress lost part of her right lung, but she returned to work just a few months after the surgery.

In 2021, she appeared in the Netflix series On the Verge. The production featured twelve episodes filmed entirely in Los Angeles under the direction of Julie Delpy.