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G
eorge Hamilton doesn’t mind
if you lead with his tan. As he
embarks on his ninth decade
— he turns 80 on Aug. 12 — the
actor and avatar of ease knows
that his hue is what has made him an icon.
Also a durable punchline. While he’s the
first to laugh about it — explaining that his
dermatologist long ago “just gave up” on
convincing him to limit his solar exposure,
and counting himself lucky not to have
been felled by skin cancer — he remains an
evangelist for sunbathing, which he started
because he didn’t like wearing film makeup
that melted in the heat.
Hamilton, who once received an honor-
ary degree from the International Smart
Tan Network, a trade association for indoor
tanning facilities, that he still prominently
displays, says vitamin D is “a healer for
me.” These days, though, to maintain his
mahogany effect, he relies on a vintage
stash of George Hamilton’s Constant Color
auto-bronzing tinted cream, which he once
peddled on QVC.
He’s uniquely qualified to assess the
country’s only better-known perma-tanner,
Donald Trump. “I think he slops bronzer on
and hopes it’ll last till the evening — easy
to put on, probably a spray tan: less fussy
and camera-ready,” says Hamilton, whom
Trump once employed as a host of Miss
Universe and later bestowed with a Lifetime
Achievement Award for “debonair style.”
For anyone seeking more than skin-deep
analysis of the president, Hamilton is not
your man. He says he hasn’t voted in his life
and believes it’s irresponsible for actors,
who “have no qualifications,” to express
opinions on such matters. “They’re given an
unusual amount of credibility,” he says. “A
lot of young actors do it and they shouldn’t.
The political [people] are happy to use your
persona. I think it’s unfair to the voter.”(Still, this belief didn’t stop him from dis-
cussing gun rights on a 2016 Fox & Friends
appearance to announce his new gig as
KFC’s “Extra Crispy” Colonel.)
That said, Hamilton keeps a Make
America Great Again cap in the corner of his
living room, which Trump, with whom he
has mutual Palm Beach pals, gifted him at
a campaign rally the actor says he happened
into at Trump Tower. The president, he says,
“was always a performer in his own mind”
— like Hamilton himself.
Though his more than 60 film roles
include Evel Knievel, Hank Williams and
the consigliere in The Godfather: Part
III (“Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the bet-
ter ones”), Hamilton’s best character has
always been George Hamilton. Long before
it became axiomatic for actors to leverage
their personal brands, Hamilton understood
that his persona was matinee idol. (One who
did an awful lot of TV.) He’s parlayed his
shtick into one of Hollywood’s remarkablylong-lasting careers — including as pitch-
man and owner of eponymous cigar lounges
— outlasting stretches when the acting
offers dried up. Now one of the last remain-
ing products of the old studio system still
actively working, he offers a singular per-
spective on a transforming industry.
Hamilton remains vigorous, in all con-
notations. His trainer has him boxing. His
vitamin intake includes 40 pills a day. “It’s
off the rails,” he admits. He’s developing
two films and a TV series as a producer out
of a well-staffed office suite in Beverly Glen,
where he first invites THR to meet him,
taking a seat beneath a large chalk pastel
portrait of his more youthful self. His cur-
rent projects include a sequel to his star turn
as Dracula in the hit 1979 romantic comedy
Love at First Bite (“As long as I’m alive, I can
play that guy; the more befuddled I might
become, the better”) as well as a drama
about the life and 1970 disappearance of his
friend Sean Flynn, son of Errol. And while1This drawing gifted to Hamilton by caricaturist Robert Carley hangs in his home’s entryway.