Andrew Stevens ought to be used to folks making a fuss over him. When he was all of 4 and living in Memphis, his actress mother, Stella (The Manitou) Stevens, and his electrician father waged one of showbiz's fiercest custody fights over little Andrew. "My mother snuck into town one night," he remembers. "The next thing I knew I was on a plane headed for L.A." But after a year with her in Benedict Canyon, "I was playing outside and my father and grandfather pulled up and whisked me back. I was put on a chartered plane." The ensuing legal fracas made sensational headlines before a judge ruled Stevens a ward of the court and turned him over to Stella. Was his young psyche wounded by the battle? "Hell," snorts Andrew, "I was having a ball!"
It's no different at 23. Though his mom warned, "Acting will drive you crazy or break your heart," Andrew forged on and has had three flashy successes in the past three months alone. He was exciting as Kirk Douglas' psychic son in Brian De Palma's bloody blockbuster The Fury. Meanwhile he co-starred in the sleeper hit of Hollywood's Vietnam offensive, The Boys in Company C. And, finally, he played the title role in the high-rated two-night TV syndication of the John Jakes best-seller The Bastard.
Nepotism? No way. Stella's star has been descendant since The Nutty Professor in 1963—which was three years after her original orbiting with a nude layout in Playboy. "Strangely enough," Andrew says, "I got her an acting assignment once." While shooting The Oregon Trail series last season (which flopped on NBC but made him an idol in Britain), "the producer was saying that he had this part that would be terrific for Stella Stevens—he was surprised I was her son. I had her fly in the next day and there we were, working together for the first time." Since then Stella has fled Hollywood and, except for TV bits and B movie roles, lives alone in rural Washington State, hauling her own water and cooking on a wood stove.
On the Trail series, Andrew met the other lady in his life, actress Kim (The One and Only) Darby. Though both were shy at first—Kim is divorced and eight years older—they set up housekeeping nine months ago. Ever since, Andrew claims, "I've calmed down a lot. I was reckless and had five motorcycles and a lot of accidents. Kim doesn't like motorcycles very much." (Her ex-husband, actor James Stacy, lost an arm and a leg in a crackup.) "He's a compassionate person," approves Darby of Andrew. "And affectionate, intense, complex and talented." But as for marriage, Kim frets: "I'm not grown up enough yet."
Stevens was born in Memphis, where his parents had emigrated from Mississippi. They were divorced before he was a year old and Stella's never remarried, though his dad, Andrew reports, is on his fourth wife now. "Living in a canyon in Beverly Hills was not the ideal environment for kids," Stevens reflects. So when his military school folded, he returned to Memphis and a working-class public high, where his extracurricular interests included chewing tobacco (which he still enjoys). "I never thought of acting until the end of 11th grade. I was a drummer and had a rock group." But then, he sighs, "I was registering for classes and saw a beautiful blonde—she was the new speech teacher. So I signed up for her drama class." Stevens subsequently won a statewide acting competition before giving up a college scholarship and heading for Hollywood and "a considerable amount of rejection." Unemployment paid the rent until he started landing guest shots (Adam 12), bit parts (Shampoo) and TV series like Apple's Way. He's also writing music and sings on his new first single, Helpless in Love.
Home now is a cozy two-bedroom place in Studio City, where Andrew and Kim share the lawn mowing and cooking (they like Japanese). "When I started making money, I bought a lot of stuff that I'm stuck with. Now," he announces, "everything I have is for sale." (Would you buy a used Porsche from the formerly "reckless" Andrew Stevens?) "What I like to do," he says, "is to get away—rock-climb, scale waterfalls. It's a peaceful thing, becoming one with the rock." He also regularly runs three and a half miles on the Santa Monica beach.
Stevens is pondering his next property—a choice made tougher with scripts starting to pile up. "I thought I would never turn down a job," he says. "But now I want each role to count." His canniest move so far was ignoring Mom's advice to pull out. "Because she's been in films for almost 20 years, one would assume she knew what she was talking about, and therefore I, being reasonably intelligent, should have listened," kids Andrew. "I didn't."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
