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Hart to Hart's Stefanie Powers on her personal acting style
"What we are selling is being accepted."
Stefanie Powers loved her time on Hart to Hart, but she certainly wasn’t one to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
Though the actor played Jennifer Hart for five seasons, she never let her career overlap with her personal life.
“Jennifer Hart is a character I play,” said Powers during an interview with The Buffalo News. “Of course, I bring to her elements of myself because I am the actor playing it. But is she like me? She’s an invention, and if she bears any relationship or resemblance to me, I mean, it’s only natural. I’m playing her. When I take the makeup off, it goes down the drain, and that’s where Jennifer Hart is.”
Powers starred in the series alongside Robert Wagner, appearing as her on-screen husband. While Wagner and Powers weren’t necessarily looking for audiences to relate to their characters, they were hopeful that viewers would look at Jonathan and Jennifer Hart and believe that they could be real people. To Powers, believability was what truly sold the merit of a series.
“An actor is a person playing a part,” said Powers. “He is the person selling the potatoes. What we are selling is being accepted. What we really have here are two characters, and either you buy the characters and how they relate to each other, or you don't. And therein, I think, is the success or failure of the show.”
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