Linda Evans, Amazing Grace

Do you believe in God? demands "Dynasty" superstar Linda Evans of a newa acquiantance. I belive God is in my life, all day, every day... There is no way to turn him off and on.

Hardly the philosophy one might anticipate from a Hollywood celebrity, whose show, in which she co-stars with John Forsythe and Joan Collings, is one of television`s top rated series. She is also, at her 40 (her birthday is November 18th), one of Hollywood`s hottest sex symbols.

"Dynasty," ABC`s prime-time soap just now beginning its third season, chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes of Blake Carrington, a ruthless, and manipulative but some how lieable patriarch of an oil-rich Denver family. Linda Evans, plays his wife, Krystle-beautiful, virtuous and long-suffering. Her performance in the role earned her two awards in 1982: the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series.

Faithful viewers of the show might have notices a small gold and diamond cross that she always wears. It`s mine, and the one piece of jewelry I never take off, she confides. When I auditioned for the role, Aaron Spelling (executive coproducer of the series) saw the cross and told me, It`s perfect. You should wear it on the show. It is perfect for Krystle`s character. I would have worn it whether he wanted me to or not.

Perhaps only on television can a 15-year-old bobby-soxer grow up to marry the older man she once had a (television) crush on, but that is exactly what happened. At 15, she was personally cast by John Forsythe in his TV series "Bachelor Father." Forsythe recalls her at the time as appearing to be a tall bundle of angular knobs and mumbs, very sweet and very shy. Their reunion after 20 years was summed up best by Forsythe on the "Dynasty" set: "My, have you changed!"

Born Linda Evanstad in Hartford, Connecticut, she moved to Hollywood with her parents, both professional dancers, when she was only six months old. Although painfully shy as a child, she did dream of becoming part of the entertainment world and studied drama at Hollywood High School. While there, an actress friend insisted she try out for a commercial (all you have to do is dring the ginger ale and smile," said the director), ehich she got. Three commercials later came "Bachelor Father," and a career, as they say, was launcehd.

Although raised as a Roman Catholic, at the time Evans was 18 and soon to leave "Bachelor Father" for a $250-a-week MGM contract and her most famous pre-"Dynasty" television series, "The Big Valley," Evans was ex-ploring far more independent means of expressing her deep religious feelings. "As I grew older, I began to seek my own way of honoring God in my life," Linda confied. "I myself don`t believe you have to have a talk with God. How you walk through life is how you honor God". Evans continues with a smile, "I began to look into all religions-meditation, Eastern religions, all of them. I wanted an idea of what everybody did when they prayed." Little did she know that her faith would be the strength to bring her through a series of dramatic major career and life crises to come.

"The Big Valley" really put Linda Evans on the entertainment map. Even today, 13 years after the show ceased filming, her portrayal of Barbara Stanwyck`s daughter, Audra Barkley, is well remembered by television viewers, since, although only 112 episodes were filmed, the series is in constant rerun somewhere. Evans and Stanwyck are still as close as ever. They live near each other, talk often (Linda calls her "mom") and exchange present "all the time," according to Evans. While in "The Big Valley," Evans met matinee idol John Derek, 17 years her senior and a divorced father whose second wife, Ursula Andress, left him for Jean-Paul Belmondo and greener pasture.

Derek`s picture had long hung over Linda`s bed when she was a teenager. "I spent years looking into those eyes," she says. This began a ten-year union that came close to ruining her career and, at its end, close to destroying her life or, or so she thought at the time. "John wanted me out of the series," Evans recalls, "and we wanted to spend all of our time together and work together.... It was marvelous," she remembers. Their days together were delight, but romantic months passed into languid years as her career went nowhere.

There were few projects... a small part in a Walt Disney television movie and such forgettable films as Twilight of Honor. And in the twilight of her career, a real life crisis was hurled upon her. In 1973, John Derek went to Greece to make a film with a 16-year-old actress named Mary Kathleen Collins. Even today, Linda Evans finds it difficult to describe arriving for a reunion with her husband and being told by the person she had shared everything with for almost ten years that, although he still loved her, he was in love with someone else. That "someone else," of course, is now the current Mrs. John Derek, Bo. Faith was Linda`s resource in coping with the crisis.

"There are times in your life when something happends to you uo can`t understand," she recalls. "You live the golden rule, you feel you are a good person, and something terribly painful happens. It forces you to turn inward. I am sure it was my faith that sustained me when my fiorst marriage broke up. Something like that forces you to turn inward, like a serious illness. "Faith gives you the strength to deal with the important things in life," she continues. "Lots of people like to blame God for the bad things that happen to them. I have never felt that way, and that is now how I perceive things. That is when you have to have faith."

And Evans now understand the benefit of faith. "The break-up of my marriage sent me in all kinds of good areas," she smiles. "I still have a friendship with John Derek, and I have a life that is quite extraordinary and which I might never have had if the marriage had lasted. In retrospect, the end of my marriage was the perfect time." With the marriage in ruins, Linda returned to Hollywood and put her house up for sale. One of the first callers was Beverly Hills realtor Stan Herman, with whom she became romantically involved.

It was two years, however, before she felt sure enough of the relationship to call Derek and ask for a divorce. Linda and Stan were married in 1976 and separated in 1979, partially because of career demands. Following the separation from Herman, she moved into a million-dollar bachelor pad, a spacious three bedroom Cape Cod-style brick home on a secluded cul-de-sac in Beverly Hills, and filled the house with ex-quisite French country antiques. Linda Evans`s house, although not modest in price (nothing in Beverly Hills is these days), is delighfully lacking the sometimes garish ostenation many superstars, instantly assume. She loves light, and the sunlit rooms show it, decorated in white and pastel pinks and blues. Recently with her blond hair gleaming and wearing awhite, off-the-shoulder dress, she and her setting looked like what souther California is suposed to be all about... and rarely is. The house has a swimming pool, albeit small by local standards, and during their dormant season, she keeps her large collection of orchid plants in the garage rather than in a greenhouse, which she could well afford.

Living alone is hardly the equivalent of being lonely for Linda, who, in addition to "Dynasty" (she had not a single day off for a four-month stretch early this year), has written a cookbook to be published by Simon and Schuster next year and is working on a book about beauty for the same publisher. At 40, beauty is something Evans knows plenty about. Blonde, with antonishing blue eyes fading toward yellow at the center, her face is remarkable. Its chiseled features remind many of Bo Derek, 14 years her junior and four inches shorter than Linda`s 5`8 frame. Bo is reported to have called Linda simply "the most gorgeous person in the world."

"To me, people look good on the outside becuase of how they feel on the inside," she confides. "If you have inner peace, you will look good." Evans belives there is a direct correlation between her faith and her appearance. "I think lot of things people let bother them I just don`t let bother me. I was born happy."

She rarely wears jewelry, wears little makeup and hopes in the upcoming beauty book to "explain all that I have learned over the years." She loves to jog but, lacking time to do it, has had a small gym built in the house. There she has a computerized stationary cycle that she rides an hour a day, and she also lifts weights. She adores cooking "anything that someome enjoys eating" in her Wedgewood blue country kithcen. That love of cooking is shared by her current romance, George Santopietro, a 36-years-old owner of four restaurants in Los Angeles, whom she has been dating for a year and a half. She sees a lot of her sisters (her parents are both deceased), Carol "Charlie" Davidson, a financial controller in the film industry, and Kathy Evanstad, a publisher`s proofreader. Close friends also include her ex-stepdaugther, Sean Derek, John`s 29-year-old daughter by his first wife, and predecessor in Derek`s affections, Ursula Andress. In fact, following the birth of Ursula and the baby went home to Linda Evan`s house. Actually, Hamlin`s home was too small for mother and a new baby. Friends calling Linda`s home were, for a time astonished to sometimes hear a baby crying in the background. Bunky Young, her secretary, has been an inseparable friend for 17 years.

Linda is also fascinated by numerology. "I have been doing it for 11 years," she smiles. "I have done thousands and thousands of readings for people." Admitting that she first discovered a book on numerology in a Hollywood book store while shopping for tomes of a somewhat more theological nature, she enthuses, "It is just startling how much you can tell someone about themselves with numerology... It`s wonderful for helping people to help themselves." Also, in most nonstereotypical fashion for Hollywood, she dresses in comparatively modes fashion. "I have a lot of jewlry, but I rarely wear it, she notes, and " a lot of clothes, just terrific clothes, which I rarely wear," ofthen preffering a simple pullover and blue jeans to more glamorous fashions.

At 40, Linda Evans is making more money than she has ever mad in her life (her "Dynasty" income is well into five figures weekly). The money keeps rolling in. Recently, she signed a lucrative agreement to be the celebrity spokesperson for the Bonaventure Intercontinental Holet and Spa in Florida where she also will be hosting a celebrity tennis tournament in December. Eschewing the expercted 20-yeard-old nubile stereotype, the resort selected Linda becuase, to them she "epitomizes glowing health and beauty." And more and more television comes her way too. Recently she starred in CBS`s Bare Essence, a saga about the perfume industry, and this fall she`ll also be seen in specials where she`ll share the spotlight with veteran stars George Burns and Bob Hope.

Of her comparative and fairly sudden affluence Linda Evans says she is as comfortable as she is driving her Mercedes. "I believe in God wants me to have all the things I need in life. I don`t thing material things are bad. It is what people think they have to do to get them that is bad. The good thing about having things in life is that you find out what is important." And with it all, what is really important for the superstar of "Dynasty"? Perhaps with Ursula Andress` success with becoming a mother, she admits she is presently having " a wonderful time just being in love," but smiles as she says, " I would adore being happily married the rest of my life ad I thing I would like a child."

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