[5] At the age of 16, she was put under studio contract with Columbia Pictures, and as was the movie-industry custom in those days, her name change to the more Anglo-Saxon-sounding "Stefanie Powers" was made a part of the deal.

Powers' father, Morrison Bloomfield Paul (1909–1993), reportedly a cinematographer,[7] was born in Montreal to a Jewish immigrant family from Eastern Europe.

[8] She remained very close throughout her life to her mother, who was born Juliana Dimitria Golan (1912–2009) on a farm near Middletown, New York to Catholic parents of Polish descent.

[9] Her mother, who died in Los Angeles from pneumonia at 96 years of age,[10] was known late in life and in local obituaries as Julie Powers.

Stefanie Powers had an older brother, Jeffrey Julian Paul[11][12] (1940–2013), of Orangevale, California, as well as a half-sister, Diane Pascoe Hanson Baillie, who died in 2000.

[14] In 1966, her "tempestuous" good looks led to being cast in the starring role as the passive and demure April Dancer, in the short-lived television series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., a spin-off of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

[14] Powers' many guest roles in other popular TV shows include Lancer (1969), McCloud (1971), The Mod Squad (1972), Banacek (1972), Kung Fu (1974), The Rockford Files (1975), Three for the Road (1975), The Six Million Dollar Man (1976), The Bionic Woman (1976), and McMillan & Wife (1977).

[15] In 1978, Powers starred with Paul Clemens and Brian Dennehy in the TV movie A Death in Canaan, directed by Tony Richardson.

This TV movie was a dramatization of the nonfictional account of Connecticut townspeople rising to the defense of a local teenager charged with the mutilation murder of his mother in September 1973.

[17] In 1978, Powers and Stacy Keach were the leads in the stage play Cyrano de Bergerac in a season at the Central Theater in the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center.

[18][19][20] In 1979, Powers starred with Roger Moore, Telly Savalas, David Niven, Sonny Bono and Elliott Gould, in the British adventure feature film Escape to Athena, in which a group of Anglo-American prisoners of the Germans scramble to liberate themselves and some Greek art treasures.

The production was staged by Elijah Moshinsky for producer Laurence Myers, with choreography by Arlene Phillips and Rafael Aguilar, and scenery by William Dudley.

[38][39] Powers started a tour of Looped, a stage play about her former co-star Tallulah Bankhead in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 26, 2013.

The musical was directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, with a book by Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin, and the score by Matthew Sklar and Nell Benjamin.

The developmental reading of the musical is being produced by Open Jar Productions as part of their New Works Initiative on November 17, 2017, for an industry-only presentation at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

[42] In 2018, Powers co-starred in the feature film The Artist's Wife alongside lead actors Bruce Dern and Lena Olin.

[43][44] In May 2018, Cambridge Arts Theatre announced the casting for the United Kingdom stage tour production of James Roose-Evans' adaptation of Helene Hanff's novel 84 Charing Cross Road, in collaboration with Lee Dean and Salisbury Playhouse.

84 Charing Cross Road, first published in 1970, is a bittersweet comedy based on the extraordinary true story of the remarkable relationship that developed over 20 years, chronicling New York writer Hanff's correspondence with Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co, a London bookshop.

The production opened at Darlington Hippodrome on Wednesday 23 May, then toured to Wolverhampton, Malvern, Richmond, Oxford and finishing at Cambridge Arts Theatre on 30 June 2018.

[50] On November 6, 2017, Powers was honored by the Palm Springs Women in Film & Television Organisation (PSWIFT) with the "9th Annual Broken Glass Award" for her work as an actress, author and animal advocate.

[51] PSWIFT presents this award to outstanding women from the film and television industry who have "broken through the glass ceiling" in the field of entertainment, the arts and philanthropy.

[58] On April 1, 1993, she married French aristocrat Patrick Houitte de La Chesnais[59][60] (born May 7, 1951, Versailles, France); the couple divorced in 1999.