Stefanie Powers began her career at age 15, dancing for famed Broadway choreographer, Jerome Robbins. She was put under contract to Columbia Pictures in the final years of the Hollywood star system. While under contract, she appeared in 15 of the 31 motion pictures she has made, co-starring with screen legends such as John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Cliff Robertson, Elliot Gould, Roger Moore, Donald Sutherland, Bing Crosby, Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, James Caan and Sammy Davis. She recently co-starred with Richard Chamberlin in the critically acclaimed independent film, “Three Days Of Hamlet.”
Her first television series, “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.,” marked a milestone in U.S. television's history as the first hour-long series featuring a female in the leading role. Her television career includes over 25 mini-series, over 200 episodic guest starring appearances, 35 movies for television and two more television series, “Feather and Father” and the long running “Hart to Hart,” starring opposite Robert Wagner.
Powers became a member of the Screen Writers Guild of America in the 1980s, and has produced several of the screenplays she has written. One of these, “Family Secrets,” was not only a stepping stone for the careers of James Spader and Gary Sinise, but it also garnered her a nomination for the best screenplay of the year by her peers in the Writers Guild. Her writing has extended itself to a memoir called, One From The Hart, published by The Robson Press.
Throughout her career, Powers has never neglected her theatrical roots, and has appeared in productions of How the other Half Loves, Under the Yum Yum Tree, Sabrina Faire, View from the Bridge, Oliver, Annie Get Your Gun, the West End debut of Matador, an off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues and the West End production of Love Letters with Robert Wagner. She toured the United States with Wagner in Love Letters, becoming the cast most associated with the play after over 500 performances. While appearing in a production of Love Letters in the Middle East, she received a request from Valerie Harper to take over her role in the play, Looped.
Powers once again appeared in the UK in the West End production of The King and I, which also toured the United States for ten months. As a result of the successful remounting of the musical Sunset Boulevard at the Ogunquit Theatre, a US revival is in the works. She appeared once again in the UK in 2012 co-starring opposite Richard Johnson of Royal Shakespeare Company fame, in the play, On Golden Pond. Powers has recorded a CD with the legendary jazz artist Page Cavanaugh called On the Same Page, available online at Jambomusic.com. Also in 2012, she performed her one woman show, Hart of my Heart, a tribute to the life and the lyrics of Lorenz Hart at the newly opened Matcham Room at the Hippodrome.
As much a part of her life as her career, is her devotion to animal preservation and protection, which at times becomes more of a vocation than an avocation. She is founder and president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, established in 1982 to continue and to further her long-time partner’s conservation work in East Africa after his death.
Powers was appointed
conservation consultant to Jaguar and Land Rover after creating the Jaguar
Conservation Trust which she has operated in Central America. She has been on the advisory board of four
zoos in the United States and is a fellow of the Los Angeles Zoo, the Explorers' Club and the Royal Geographic
Society. She is active in the movement
to preserve and protect the remaining herds of the North American wild horses
and has received numerous international awards for her grass roots work in conservation
which she considers a life-long commitment.
Powers resides part of the year in Kenya.
