Return To Film and Television
Wagner's film career received a revival after his role in the Austin Powers series of spy spoofs starring Mike Myers. Wagner played Dr. Evil's henchman Number 2 in all three films: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).
He also became the host of Fox Movie Channel's Hour of Stars, featuring original television episodes of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), a series which Wagner had appeared on in his early days with the studio.
In 2005, Wagner became the television spokesman for the Senior Lending Network, a reverse mortgage lender and in 2010 began as a spokesman for the Guardian First Funding Group, also a reverse mortgage lender. As of June 2011, Guardian First Funding was acquired by Urban Financial Group, who continue to use Mr. Wagner as their spokesperson.
In 2007, Wagner had a role in the BBC/AMC series Hustle. In season four's premiere, Wagner played a crooked Texan being taken for half a million dollars. As Wagner is considered "a suave icon of American caper television, including It Takes a Thief and Hart to Hart", Robert Glenister (Hustle's fixer, Ash Morgan) commented that "to have one of the icons of that period involved is a great bonus for all of us".
Wagner also played the pivotal role of President James Garfield in the comedy/horror film Netherbeast Incorporated (2007). The role was written with Wagner in mind. He had a recurring role of a rich suitor to the main characters' mother on the sitcom Two and a Half Men. His most recent appearances on the show were in May 2008.
Wagner's radio and television career was recognized by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters on January 30, 2009, when they presented him with their Art Gilmore Career Achievement Award.
Wagner has guest-starred as Tony's father, Anthony DiNozzo Sr., in three episodes of NCIS: "Flesh and Blood" (2010), "Broken Arrow" (2010), and "Sins of the Father" (2011). He was set to star as Charlie in the 2011 reboot of Charlie's Angels, but due to scheduling conflicts, had to exit the project.
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Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, film and/or television:
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O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
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“All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance.”
—François Truffaut (1932–1984)
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)