Stefanie Powers’ perfect white teeth, huge smile, radiant complexion and sparkling eyes are every inch the American dream. But as her new book reveals, there’s much more to this Hollywood star than meets the eye. Katherine MacAlister talks to the world famous actress about the trials and tribulations of fame before her appearance at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival.

She’s seen it all, Stefanie Powers. Growing up in old-fashioned Hollywood she hung out with John Wayne, Rock Hudson and Ava Gardner, and starred in films with the likes of Roger Moore and Lana Turner.

Most famous for her five-year stint with Robert Wagner as one half of Hart To Hart, behind the scenes she was coping with the loss of her great love William Holden to alcoholism and continuing their conservation work.

Her new memoir From The Hart was written while recuperating from two devastating events – lung cancer and the death of her mother, thus exorcising her emotional demons.

“It was a real period of recovery for me,” she tells me. “And it was a daunting thing to do because I had to reflect, more than I would have liked, on the past, so there was a positive and negative side to it. But it was a helpful process to me, a cathartic experience. And it’s my voice and my attitude, which is why I wrote it alone.”

So does Stefanie, 69, feel exposed having revealed all to the world? “No,” she says,”because I didn’t write about anything I would be embarrassed about and I don’t feel that I have compromised anything or anyone.

“It’s like a doing a movie – it gets edited, publicised and you attend the opening, but because this book was brought out first in the US I’ve had time to get used to it. And I think people are refreshed that it’s not just about me, me, me but about the world I was lucky enough to have a function in.”

It’s an amazing story either way. Growing up in Hollywood, Stefanie Powers was always a someone. But despite this, her memoir is remarkably unstarry. “Well, I started very young and lived in a community and a movie industry where everyone knew everyone.

“So even though Bill (William Holden, her partner) was the biggest movie star in the world, it was very different then because It was before the obsession with celebrity evolved. I mean, we went to the Academy Awards in our own clothes,” she laughs. “I’d be so embarrassed to wear someone else’s clothes and then have to give them back!”

After the death of William Holden, instead of sitting around moping, she set up a conservation trust in his name to carry on their work in Kenya, an ongoing project.

Get her on the subject of the environment though and you’re in for the long haul, because it’s Stefanie’s passion, and her tireless fund-raising is a life-long commitment. “It’s in my blood and I take my responsibilities very seriously,” she says. “I’d be a very rich woman otherwise, but I’m not, which is why I’m still working.”

Charity work aside, Stefanie’s work is mainly in the theatre these days and she has graced the West End numerous times in the last few decades. “I like hard work and I’m one of the privileged few who make a living from doing something I really enjoy.”

So where’s home? “I’m based between the US, London and Kenya, but I still go travelling around the world whenever I can. I’m not a lie-on-the-beach kind of person, but I do have an insatiable curiosity, which is why I‘m so excited about coming to the literary festival, because I’ve only been to Oxford once before.”

* Stefanie Powers appears at The Oxford Literary Festival next Thursday at 2pm in Christ Church Library.

See oxfordliteraryfestival.com for more information. The Oxford Literary Festival opens on Saturday and runs until Sunday, April 10. Stefanie is pictured, left, with the Queen Mother, former US president Ronald Regan and, above, in Hart to Hart with Robert Wagner