Marick With Children
Calm, Cool and Collecting Big Bucks, Michael Nader Brings His Dex Appeal to Daytime (SOD 8/17/93)

Just the Facts
Birthdate: February 18, 1945   Hometown: Beverly Hills, CA
Everybody has to start somewhere: In 1965, new kid on the beach Nader was kicking up sand in Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini   How he feels about those films now: "I cringe when I think about them."   Dynasty data: Nader tried out for the role of Peter de Vilbis. Helmut Berger got it, but Nader was cast as "Dex" Dexter.

He knew he'd made it when: He heard about a network memo saying, "We need a Michael Nader type."  His thoughts on Joan Collins: "Joan really is Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. She is a diva."  His thoughts on Susan Lucci: "The only time she throws her weight around is when it should be thrown around."  His worst habit (According to his wife): "He picks at his cuticles."

It's a blistering summer day in New York- the whole city reeks of hot tar and taxi fumes- but Michael Nader is keeping cool. The man who wouldn't be caught dead without his Rolex watch and designer duds on Dynasty is wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt as he walks briskly down West 66th Street to AMC. Nearing the studio, he steps carefully to avoid the garbage at the curb, but not the bum camped out beside it. Nader will probably give him some change and a smile. Why not? "Does it hurt to be human?" Nader asks.

It's something he learned the hard way. In his pre-Dynasty days, Nader clocked a lot of mileage cultivating a "bad boy" image. Fights, car scrapes, and experimentation with drugs were all part of the angry-young-man package. Nowadays, he's much calmer. AMC may not be as glitzy as Dynasty once was, but the pay's good (six figures a year, we hear; did you think they'd pay Susan Lucci's co-star peanuts?) and besides, the are no "egos" to deal with. "That's a rarity in the acting profession," he notes.

So is a good marriage- something Nader has apparently latched onto at last with actress-turned-writer Beth Windsor, his bride of 16 months. Bland and adorable they're not; feisty and fiercely devoted seems more their style. After one memorable battle royal on the Long Island Expressway, they wound up buying a beach retreat in the Hamptons. "That's us," laughs Windsor. "We're not skipping down the road of happy destiny together. We have an argument and, pow, we buy a house!"

Nader joined AMC in September 1991 with mixed feelings. the role of brooding prince Dimitri Marick appealed to him. (How many guys in daytime get the girl and the Gothic mansion?) So did the fact that AMC tapes in New York, since Windsor was planning to move there and Nader was leery of a bicoastal relationship. But Nader wasn't sure he wanted to get sucked back into "the nightmare of daytime" again. (He'd done a soap in the 1970s.)

His initiation into Pine Valley was rough. By the time Nader was cast, AMC had lost valuable time auditioning a slew of imitation "Prussian vampires" for the role, as he puts it. They were 13 shows behind schedule. That meant that Dimitri's first scenes had to be post-taped at breaknecking speed and spliced into otherwise finished episodes. Often, Nader didn't leave the studio till 11:30 at night. He lost nine pounds in two weeks from stress.

Off-screen, the culture shock was even worse. After 13 years of living in sanitized Southern California, Manhatten's concrete jungle was hard to take. "The one thing you get in L.A. is a sense of isolation," he says. "You go one cubicle to another. In New York, you literally have to put yourself out on the street to go anywhere. Everything is in your face. It got to a point where, if anyone came up to me for a handout, I wouldn't even look. I was dehumanizing them, and myself, in the process."

Ultimately, the actor and his wife came up with a response plan they call "contrary action." Now when they encounter a street beggar, they don't automatically turn away. "It's easy to write a check to the charity of your choice," he explains. "This is a day-to-day thing that we're working on. You can do every self-help program in the world, and it's all very internalized. It's always about me, how can I better myself? I think the world would certainly improve if everyone started asking themselves why they're not nice. What right do you have to be an a--hole? Aren't you tired of [it]? I am. I'm tired of putting my foot in my mouth time and again."

The product of a "divided family," as he once described it, Nader was born in St. Louis and raised in Beverly Hills. He wasn't a rich kid. Despite the posh zip code, he grew up in an apartment, not a mansion; his mother, a struggling actress, did TV commercials to pay the rent. At Beverly Hills High, he got into surfing, modeling- and trouble. He attended Santa Monica City College for a while, got his first TV break on Sally Field's sitcom Gidget, and reportedly experimented with drugs. (According to People and Tv Guide, Nader traveled with a pretty freewheeling psychedelic crowd, but he's foresworn drugs and alcohol since 1980).  

In the 70's, he came to New York, embarked on a long relationship with actress Ellen Barber (ex-Joanna, The Secret Storm) and did a stint as As the World Turns's Kevin Thompson. When the romance and the soap role petered out, Nader returned to L.A. His turn as a chic Greek on Bare Essence brought him to the attention of Dynasty's producers, who were trying to find a new love interest for Joan Collins (Alexis). Nader's coloring was all wrong for the part of oilman Farnsworth "Dex" Dexter (the producers wanted fair hair and blue eyes), but his chemistry with difficult-to-please Collins was undeniable.

In retrospect, Nader feels that Collins (who was 12 years his senior) "took care of me. She was very attracted to me within the context of the role, and I think that's the reason I stayed. Slowly that spark happened and boom, we had it! Joan could run the set with a temperamentthat was very hard to take." (She reputedly once held up production because Alexis's phone book wasn't Louis Vuitton leather). "But," he adds, "she was always professional. When that camera rolled, she took charge."

During his Dynasty run, Nader's personal life changed immeasurably. In 1984, he married production assistant Robin Weiss, and that same year welcomed a daughter, Lindsay Michelle. The marriage didn't survive, but Nader remains close to Lindsay, now 8, who lives on the West Coast with her mom. "The hardest thing about being in New York," he confides, "is having less time with my daughter. It's tough [for a child], getting through a divorce." But Nader flies out to see Lindsay regularly, and burns up the phone lines.

Despite his tense beginnings on AMC, Nader has become an indispensable part of the Pine Valley scene. Working with Susan Lucci (Erica) is a relaxed, comfortable reunion; they first hit it off making the 1989 TV movie Lady Mobster together. (But Nader insists Lucci had nothing to do with his casting on AMC). Co-hunk Michael E. Knight (Tad) jokingly calls him Prince Naaahdeer (in the worst possible Dracula accent) and the crew has an even rowdier name for the Hungarian heartthrob- Dimbo. "Yes, Dimitri is Dimbo," laughs good-sport Nader. At rehearsal, my attention is all over the place. I'm always asking, 'Line? Line?' So the crew nicknamed me Dimbo, because maybe they wonder, 'Is this guy ever gonna get the scene right?'"

Not to worry. When the camera rolls, the words come effortlessly for Nader, and so does the magic. These days, he's getting it right on screen and off.

So, How's Married Life Treating You?
Take it from us, Michael Nader and Beth Windsor are a very '90s couple. But it wasn't love at first sight when they met at a mutual friend's birthday party in L.A.- and Windsor was certainly no fan. "I'd never watched Dynasty, so I didn't know who Michael Nader was," she confides. "My friend, Frank Langella, used to tell me about it all the time. It was his favorite show, but for real snide reasons. He'd say, 'Beth, you gotta watch the show sometime, because it's so bad that it's good.'"

Totally unaware of Nader's "Dex" appeal, Windsor wasn't manhunting period. "I was in my I'm single, happy, leave me alone phase," she laughs. "But Mike [she rarely calls him Michael] was very charming."

Pretty soon, they were engaged, moving to New York, and arguing their way through a vacation weekend at Gurney's health spa on Long Island. ("Sorry, Gurney's," explains Nader. "I'm very fussy, and that place was just too cute for me. I told Beth I couldn't sleep there.") How did they make up? By reserving the First Presbyterian Church in South Hampton, where they exchanged vows on March 20, 1992.

Today, they've survived a lot, including a year's stay in a four-flight walkup apartment that nearly winded them both. Windsor, who played Frankie Bridges on Capitol in the mid-'80s, just finished writing a play about "a friend with AIDS who was very indiscriminate in her sexual behavior and got busted by the press. We may do it as a benefit for the Kennedy Foundation."

Meanwhile, their new Manhatten digs are spacious and soundproof, a necessity for these two tranquility seekers. "Beth has the most acute sense of hearing," laughs Nader. "If I'm in another room learning my lines out loud, she can hear me. If I whisper them she still hears me." Well, there's one benefit. Even at a crowded party, he knows she'll get the message when he mutters those three little words under his breath: Let's go home.