Actress resists any showbiz labels

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 17

Actress resists any showbiz labels

By

AMANDA ATHA,

“Observer.”

Stefanie Powers, the star of- the "Hart to Hart” series with Robert Wagner, and about 27 other films, goes to Britain at least once a year. She likes it, having lived there for eight years in the sixties to make three films, including “Fanatic,” with Talullah Bankhead and "Crescendo.” She also films some of her own productions there. “I enjoy the crews. I don’t enjoy being taxed so badly. I come because of he excellent crews, and the scenery.” Her latest television coproduction filmed here and in Kenya, is “A Shadow on the Sun,” the life of Beryl Markham. This is the latest in the new wave of Biggles-type ladies to emerge on the screen out of Africa. Beryl Markham was brought up in Kenya (born 1902), knew the Blixens, played polo, flew solo west across the Atlantic, and wrote an account of it called “West With the Night.” She had two husbands and many lovers, including Prince Henry, later Duke of Gloucester.

Beryl Markham is played by Stefanie Powers, brought up in California (born about 1942), plays polo, no husbands, associated with long-time lover William Holden, the actor. The rest of the cast includes several very big names: Timothy West, Niamh Cusack, Claire Bloom, Nicola Pagett, James Fox, Peter Bowles. Miss Powers says her productions are “like my children. You put so much into these things. It takes a lot to do them.” She has rented a cottage beside the Royal Berkshire polo club near Winkfield for the summer to play polo but admits she is not very good.

She answers the telephone herself, switching off the answering machine when she gets home. Her friends say she is interesting, loyal, modest, conscientious, lively and private — secretly not a showbiz person at all. The “private” proves the shut door it sounds. She doesn’t want to say anything about her life. She is brisk and formidable — a word also used of Beryl Markham by people who knew her. She shares a house in California with her mother. Her brother, a publisher, lives abroad. Her stepfather trains racehorses. She spends three months a year in Kenya — or fewer, or six, depending on her cimmitments. She is, she stresses, a working woman, and nettled by the suggestion that her time is her own, gives one of her few personal replies: “I have worked all my life. I once had four days off in one year.” “I have done 20, maybe 25, mini-series. I have made about 27 films. I can’t remember all the names. We spent five years on ‘Hart to Hart,’ which was nearly 200 hours filming,” she says.

She was born Stefania Federkiewicz 45-ish years ago in California, into a Polish family. It shows in the beautiful almond eyes and high cheekbones and faint sense of impending doom. She went to school in California, left at 15 and went straight into “the industry.” “I have been doing it for 30 years,” she says. Stefanie was introduced to Africa by William Holden, who created the “ultimate in safaris” there some 35 years ago. He also bought 2000 acres to found a game ranch for breeding herds in captivity. Sadly Holden died in 1981, but Miss Powers keeps on. with his work, both as president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and as a director of the ranch. These two projects exist, she says, “in symbiotic relation,” but whereas the foundation is a public charity in America and exists mainly as a “vessel for education,” the ranch is a private Dr Doolittle of a collection put together lovingly over the years. It has 27 species, .including the “only captive breeding , herd of East African bongos in East Africa” — though there

are bongos elsewhere. It has a colour mutant strain of zebras with bluish eyes. They have a Colobus (short-thumbed) monkey, a lemur or two, and crown cranes. They also reintroduced Mary the elephant to the wild — no mean feat, and, at $60,000 the round trip, no mean cost either. When Stefahie Powers talks of East Africa her eyes light and her interest is deep and clear. And like Beryl Markham, she loves animals. “Shadow on the Sun” is based, according to her, mostly on interviews that the writer James Fox did with Mrs Markham, then an old lady, while researching his book “White Mischief” about Kenya’s Happy Valley set. Beryl Markham’s life, whoever tells the story, had everything — blood, guts, lust, black mischief, white mischief, exotic location, royalty, horses. The personal part of Miss Powers’s curriculum vitae wouldn’t fill a postcard. The publicity for “Shadow on the Sun” suggests that the two women have a lot in common. Nevertheless, this gritty American, trying hard to snatch an ordinary private life, is almost the opposite of the wild and promiscuous English pilot socialite. Stefanie Powers, as the co-producer, cast herself. She protests: “I am an actor. I am not looking for a part like me, I am looking for someone interesting to play. That is what we do, as actors.” “I was interested in her, and thought it could be an interesting role, and I have always wanted to work in Kenya.” Unlike Beryl Markham, who used her charms to bring excitement and money into her life, Stefanie does not wait around for the next attractive offer. Beryl Markham was willing to accept an admirer’s support. Stefanie is a self-supporting professional. Pressed as to what she does in England, she says she plays polo, an obsession of the last five years. She goes out to eat. She might go for a walk, depending. But mainly ... suddenly, she leaps, and speaks off the cuff again. ■ "My goddaughter lives here, I have friends who are like family to me, friends I have known since I was eight.”