Robert John Wagner, Jr. was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Thelma Hazel Alvera (Boe), a telephone operator, and Robert John Wagner, Sr., a traveling salesman. His paternal grandparents were German and his maternal grandparents were Norwegian. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was seven. Always wanting to be an actor, he held a variety of jobs while pursuing his goal, but it was while dining with his parents at a restaurant in Beverly Hills that he was "discovered" by a talent scout. After making his uncredited screen debut in The Happy Years (1950), Wagner was signed by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it wasn't until he essayed the two-scene role of a shellshocked war veteran in Un refrain dans mon coeur (1952) that studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic actor. He went on to play the title roles in Prince Vaillant (1954) and Jesse James, le brigand bien-aimé (1957), and portrayed a cold-blooded murderer in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). In the early '60s, however, his film career skidded to a stop after La panthère rose (1963). Several years of unemployment followed before Wagner made a respectable transition to television as star of the lighthearted espionage series Opération vol (1968) (1968-1970). He also starred in the police series Switch (1975), but Wagner's greatest success was opposite Stefanie Powers in the internationally popular Pour l'amour du risque (1979), which ran from 1979 through 1984 and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form (a 1986 series, Lime Street (1985), was quickly canceled due to the tragic death of Wagner's young co-star, Samantha Smith). Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens, Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading man career into his sixties; he has also launched a latter-day stage career, touring with Stefanie Powers in the readers' theater presentation "Love Letters". He found success playing Number Two, a henchman to Dr. Evil in the blockbuster trilogy Austin Powers (1997), Austin Powers - L'espion qui m'a tirée (1999), and Austin Powers dans Goldmember (2002), and in 2007 he began playing Teddy, a recurring role on the hit CBS series Mon oncle Charlie (2003).
