ROBERT WAGNER When Natalie died I thought my life was over
SLEUTHS: Hart To Hart with Robert and Stefanie Powers ran for five series they changed executives at ABC TV they took it off the air way too soon. That was a big disappointment.”
Sophia Loren has “a wonderful warmth about her, you just feel it”, while Audrey Hepburn proved bewitching. “Everyone who met her fell in love with her. She reflected her personality in everything she did, the clothes she wore, the way she walked, the way she decorated her home, even her pets – all elegant.”
Wagner is suavely elegant himself and even in a casual navy cashmere sweater and black trousers carries himself with the air of a man who wears a tuxedo and bow tie to take out the rubbish. Equally sophisticated was his good friend Cary Grant, whom Wagner credits with saving his life. “He got me to quit smoking,” he says. “He said, ‘That’s not good for you and I want you to stop!’ It was kind of hard and I turned to hypnosis to help quit.”
Thus began a decades-long love affair with hypnotherapy. “I use it to put things in perspective, to be able to deal with things that come up in life, particularly when you’ve had three wives. The most powerful muscle in your body is your subconscious mind.”
Wagner again turned to hypnotherapy when he suffered a crisis that threatened to end his career 20 years ago.
“I was doing three shows at one time and I lost my confidence,” he recalls. “I got stage fright. I don’t know why, it just happened. I wasn’t able to function in the way that I should and wasn’t enjoying it. I lost it. You fight the feeling but that fear can spin you back as well.”
Turning to Hollywood celebrity “hip hypnotist” Pat Collins, he pulled through. “I’m still here,” he laughs. He’ll be back when the latest season of NCIS appears in the New Year, playing Anthony DiNozzo Sr opposite Mark Harmon.
“I love working on NCIS,” he says. “Sometimes I’m even there when I’m not shooting.
“I wanted to act all my life and I’m very lucky that it worked for me and I’m not out there scratching on doors. There are not a lot of guys my age working out there.
“I always wanted to be in the movies and my father knew the director William Wellman, who put me in his film The Happy Years in 1950. Fox signed me at $75 a week with a six-month option. I became a bobby-sox heart-throb along with Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis and Tab Hunter, just before the method school actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean came along.”
HE ADDS: “I was one of the last stars of the old studio system, which had people to watch over you, care for you, look after you. You don’t have that now. Good actors who are successful can have one film flop and they’re gone! There’s no one today who’ll say, ‘OK, that didn’t work, let’s try something else.’ And the studio system protected your image. Studio publicists sent me out on dates with Rita Moreno, even though she was involved with Marlon Brando at the time.
“It was the way the game was played. And who wouldn’t want to go on dates with Rita Moreno?
“But if I was starting out in the business today I’d think twice about it. Maybe I’d go into business instead. There’s no privacy. You can’t go anywhere without being photographed. All the fun’s been taken out of the work.”
Yet he has no plans to retire. “I still enjoy acting. I’ll quit when I stop enjoying it.”
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