Revealing the VERY REAL ROBYN MALCOLM

Having lost her ego but not her vanity at age 58, the iconic Kiwi actress opens up to writer Wendyl Nissen about surviving menopause, doing her own stunts and avoiding her taxes.

- Wendyl Nissen

Robyn Malcolm would like you to have a gorgeous golden retriever puppy. She’s got them all over her Instagram and they are a legacy from her work last year shooting the new TV series Far North.

“Our co-stars were these two gorgeous dogs Toby and Carly, and I’ve remained close to their owners, so when their other dogs had puppies, I got the first video of them three hours after they were born.”

As Robyn is talking to the Weekly, she is ambushed by her own two dogs, Scooby, an Australian shepherd, and Tara, a border collie-retriever cross, who have just been for a spectacularly muddy walk with Robyn’s son Charlie.

“Never wear white when you have dogs,” she laughs as she stands up to reveal muddy paw prints all over her previously pristine white pants. It would be fair to say Robyn has become a dog person late in life.

“I just never got it,” she admits. “I always thought dogs would be annoying and then the minute we got the first one, I thought, ‘This might be my only regret in life – that I didn’t get into dogs earlier,’ because they’re a total game-changer. You become a better human when you have a dog.

“Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m lying horizontally across the top of the bed because there’s a dog here and a dog there, and then my Bengali cat Akira is taking up most of the middle of the bed, stretched out like a supermodel. I get a bit of the bed if I’m lucky.”

As she raves about her cuddly canines, it’s easy to imagine a future Robyn fostering dogs or moving out to the country to live with a dozen or so, but for now, when not worshipping her pet pooches, she is still a very successful actress.