Beautiful, vivacious redhead seeks adventurous, committed, secure, strong and sensitive man with many interests. Must be equally at home in California or Kenya, love tigers and other wild animals, have insatiable curiosity and fit into the Hollywood social scene.

Stefanie Powers hasn’t resorted to the personals ads yet to find her ideal man, but if she did, her ad might sound like that. And though there’s no doubt she’d get lots of replies, so far the position remains unfilled. Although the popular forty-three-year-old television actress meets many interesting men in her round-the-world travels, she laments that “all the good ones are married.”

But she certainly has not given up. “Listen, I live in the hope that I’m going to meet somebody,” she says with a laugh. “I haven’t found anything in three years that could turn into a relationship, but it can’t go on like this forever.”

It’s not, of course, that Stefanie is sitting around with nothing to do. In fact, in the last year, she’s been so busy with her book - Stefanie Powers Superlife System - her post-Hart to Hart projects and her other interests that she hardly has room to squeeze in another activity. “You know, if I met exactly the right man tomorrow, I wouldn’t have an hour to spend with him,” she jokes.

Her friends marvel at her energy – whether she’s shooting a movie, jetting to Africa, putting her limber body through her exercise regiment or entertaining a tiger. Stefanie Powers is the kind of totally adaptable person, says her former co-star Robert Wagner, who “can be knee-deep in horse manure on a ranch in the morning and walk into a black-tie dinner at night.”

Or, as her good friend Tom Mankiewicz says, “Stef is someone who never goes into the shallow end of the pool. She never goes into anything halfway!”

Witness a day in her life when she was working on her fitness book and filming Mistral’s Daughter: “Stefanie went to the studio at five-thirty in the morning, worked all day on action shots and then practiced a bit of polo (in preparation for a wildlife benefit),” recalls Judy Quine, her co-author and longtime friend. At ten that night she had a photo session to promote the book, followed by an ideas meeting. “We finished about eleven-thirty,” says Quine, “and I asked if we could discuss a few more ideas I had for the book tomorrow. She said ‘What about now?’ and we worked until one in the morning. She still had plenty of energy.”

This frenetic pace, of course, is partly responsible for the lull in Stefanie’s lovelife. Contrary to what the public might imagine, actresses have a tougher time than most women in building a social life, she says. “I think it should be made clear,” she emphasizes, “that the grass is always greener. You get people saying, ‘You’re an actress and you’ve got all these men …’ But I’m not interested in having thousands of men. It’s a very exciting life and very consuming, but it’s an odd life when one tries to put a relationship into it. I don’t know how to do it.”

“We’re specialists. We make movies. That’s what we do for a living,” she continues. “But we also have the extraordinary ability to have access to all sorts of fascinating societies. We have doors opened around the world that most people find shut. We’re privileged to do a lot of wonderful things other people don’t get to do. And my curiosity is insatiable. I’m a victim of my own curiosity. But it does get lonely, I must say.”

“I was thinking the other day,” she says, “it’s not that I don’t get around. It’s just that, you know, I’m always in weird places. You can find men in weird places. But they don’t always understand the movie industry. It’s very difficult to have diversified interests – because it’s difficult to have a relationship with someone who isn’t equally interested.”

“I do meet a lot of men in my travels,” she explains. “But I’ve worked too many years to achieve the little success I have – the choice of roles, the ability to choose – to throw it all over, abandon it. I have no intention of abandoning my career until my career abandons me. So a man has to fit into all that.”

But Stefanie realizes it will be rough to find a man who can fit into the tight community of people in the entertainment business. “There is a clannishness about Hollywood, an insular quality that is very difficult to penetrate if you are not a part of it,” she admits. “I don’t think a husband of mine would be happy at Hollywood dinner parties if people ignored him because he wasn’t in the business – no matter if his business was much more fascinating than mine. I think it would be very difficult for a man outside the business to cope with the clannishness.”

“On the other hand, if I were married to an actor, he’d have to appreciate my interests in other parts of the world. I’m very committed to them. Let’s say he was working and I wasn’t. Would he appreciate my flying off to Africa or China in the little spare time I have? If he shared my interests, maybe. But the motion picture and television business is not steadily scheduled work. Would his month off jive with mine? And if they didn’t, what would happen to the marriage?”

Has Stefanie ever met anyone who satisfies all these criteria, or does she hope to see in the future? “There are men who seem to have it all in hand,” she says, “but those I’ve met are married and intend to stay that way. And I have no intention of having a relationship with a married man. That’s a dead end.”

Her closest friends say (and Stefanie agrees) that it has not been easy finding a man to take William Holden’s place in her life. “I knew Bill since I was a kid and he was making pictures at Paramount,” says Judy Quine. “He was the most wonderful person, and she certainly knew what kinds of problems he had. The balance, caring as much as she did for him, was enormously courageous. It’s hard to follow up.” In any case, even relationships that seemed to hold promise have faded.

Early last year, a wealthy Oklahoma banker flew to California and wangled an introduction, reports a friend. “He was very handsome, very rich. He was divorced and just dying to meet her. They seemed to hit it off and appeared to be very smitten with each other. But it ended quickly, and that was that.”

Stefanie’s reported fling with English actor Timothy Dalton, thirty-eight, also attracted public attention briefly – particularly since he is five years younger than she. But Stefanie bridles when the age difference is brought up. (She has, in the past, had a tendency to shave a year or two from her age. Two years ago, she told me she was two years younger than she really is and admitted her true age, reluctantly, only when confronted by my research.)

“Does it matter that he’s a few years younger than I? I’ve never thought of that. I don’t think age matters at all,” she says firmly. “It’s just the compatibility of two people. I don’t know why people are always trying to pin you down by age, trying to make you conform to some image they have of women at a certain age. You don’t hear as much about men’s age. When it comes to men, they seem to be judged more by what they bring to a relationship than by their chronological age.”

In any case, it was miles, not years, that seem to have come between the actress and her co-star from Mistral’s Daughter. Today, she downplays their relationship and says only that Dalton is “in England, and we keep in touch from time to time, just like any friends.”

“Timothy is a delightful man, lots of fun,” she continues. “We had a wonderful time doing Mistral’s Daughter together. But he just came off a longtime relationship (with Vanessa Redgrave) and has his own life and future to sort out – as do I.”

“Those tabloid accounts of our ‘romance’ are so laughable. How could any of them know how we feel about each other? You can make a big thing of it when we’re both in the same photograph or television movie. But when he’s in London and I’m here in Hollywood – well, that’s a pretty poor way to conduct a love affair. You can’t conduct a real relationship with a person if you’re separated by eight thousand miles.”

Friends speculate that what Stefanie needs is “a strong man, stronger than she.” But given her own strength, it’s a requirement that won’t be easy to fill.

“I’ve got to admit I can be a very strong lady – at least as far as my work and other interests are concerned,” she says. “But I don’t want to assume the dominant role in a relationship. I need the kind of man who is secure enough to follow his own interests without submerging them in mine.”

Her hesitancy about marriage is also an obstacle. There have been rumors that she planned to wed Mankiewicz, her friend of twenty years, but both deny it, saying they are simply close friends and partners (in raising Arabian horses). It’s almost as if Stefanie bas put off-limits the people to whom she is really the closest – like Mankiewicz or Robert Wagner. “I’ve probably spent more time with Stefanie than with any other woman I’ve ever known – more than with my mother, I think,” Wagner says. “I’ve held her in my arms when she’s been crying and when she’s been laughing her head off. I have a lot of respect, great friendship for her.”

Friendship also stands in the way of romance with the men Stefanie meets during her African travels. “Someone who is doing productive work in Africa is not going to want to enclose himself in the insular world of Hollywood. And most of my friends in Africa were friends of Bill’s, or of Bill’s and mine, so there is no question of a relationship with people I’ve known for ten years or more. It’s all too incestuous there. I know everybody too well.”

Perhaps Stefanie’s unpleasant memories of married life also keep her single. “Her only marriage, to actor Gary Lockwood, was a disaster,” says a friend. “A lot of us wondered what she ever saw in him. She’s genteel, and he was crude and treated her shabbily.” The friend believes that the unhappy marriage of Stefanie’s mother, Julie Powers, still beautiful at seventy-three, may also have influenced the actress. But while this friend doubts, for these reasons, that Stefanie will ever marry again, Stefanie herself is not willing to rule out anything for the future. “Of course, everything can change when you fall in love,” she admits. “I guess when you fall in love you can then sort everything out. I can see myself married to a juggler if he were the right person.”

But for now, Stefanie is going it alone – relying on herself and her “superlife” philosophy. This hasn’t been an easy year for her. “She was just destroyed when Hart to Hart was cancelled,” says Robert Wagner. Word came last summer while she was in Paris shooting Mistral’s Daughter. And the sadness of the show’s ending was probably made more difficult because the actress didn’t have the chance to mourn the cancellation with Wagner and the rest of the cast. “I cried myself to sleep the night I heard,” Stefanie says. “We never had a chance to say goodbye.”

Perhaps Stefanie worried that the end of her hit series might mean a return to the old days – before she became television’s most popular actress. “In the past, she’s had series that didn’t do well, and then she’d have another series. I think there were times she felt she was going back to square one again,” says Judy Quine.

Adds Stefanie: “I don’t know if people are tired of seeing me on a weekly television. One never knows if success is connected to the character one plays or with oneself as an actor.”

“This is in some ways both the best time of my life and the most frustrating. You always have to be cautious in my business, and I am realistic. I know you can come off a very successful series and the next one may not be a hit. Still, I’m optimistic. You have to be, in this business.”

And she has plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Shortly after her return from Paris, she signed with CBS to do a new series within two years, as well as a number of other projects. Then, in order to take a starring role in Hollywood Wives, she had to postpone a trip to the Galapagos Islands to film a television special in which she’ll swim underwater with seals. Her Hollywood Wives role of Montana, described by best-selling author Jackie Collins as “strong, intelligent and sensual,” is a juicy part in a megaseries that boasts more major stars than are in most feature films. It will air early next month.

But even with her professional life in high gear, Stefanie still thinks about the lack of a lasting relationship in her private life. No, she hasn’t taken out a personal ad, but she’s not shy about saying laughingly, “If you know anyone who’s strong, has many interests, and is able to fit into different mini-cultures around the world, let me know – I’d love to meet him!”