Tobacco heir looking for the ideal mate

Finding a wife shouldn't be a problem for a tall, blue-eyed millionaire with a famous name. But, at 51, Patrick "RJ" Reynolds - grandson of the tobacco tycoon of Camel cigarettes fame - wants a mate so badly that he is using the internet for a worldwide search.

Gosh, Patrick, aren't there any nice girls at the yacht club?

"Meeting the right woman isn't easy," he says. "I'm looking for my soulmate."

If he lived in the wilds of North Carolina, where granddad RJ built the family's cigarette empire, his inability to find a local kindred spirit might be understandable. But Reynolds makes his home in the fashionable Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, where Cindy Crawford is a neighbour and where single women of stunning beauty are almost as common as tobacco leaves in the Carolinas.

"Oh, I've met lots of pretty women," he says, with a sigh. "But I'm tired of the bar scene where everyone is looking for good times in the short term. What I want, at my age, is to settle down and start a family. I need a woman who wants to share the rest of her life with me."

His website at www.love4two.com gives some rather rigid specifications for his dream bride. She must be Caucasian, Christian, young enough to produce a couple of children ("27 to 34 years old" seems right to him), and not a lot shorter than he is. At 188cm he thinks that his ideal woman should be at least 165cm.

His website, because it is full of detailed requirements, looks more like a shopping list than an invitation to endless love.

"No," he protests, "I don't mean to sound so demanding. I'm just trying to be honest about my needs. I'm looking for a certain kind of woman and I would be wasting everyone's time if I didn't explain that. Otherwise I'd be inundated with e-mails from all kinds of women who weren't right for me."

One surprising requirement is that his future wife must be a non-smoker. Fifteen years ago Reynolds broke with the rest of his family on the issue of smoking and has become an outspoken opponent of the big tobacco companies, heading a charitable foundation that campaigns for a smokefree America.

When he began attacking the cigarette industry for marketing products of death and disease, an outraged half-brother said: "Our father and grandfather are probably spinning in their graves."

Some of his relatives suggested that he was seeking publicity for an acting career that never quite took off. In the 1970s and 1980s he had bit parts in a few films and starred in a forgettable movie called Eliminators, a sci-fi spoof shot in Spain. "I played Mandroid," Reynolds says proudly, "a creature who's half-man, half-machine."

Cynics might suggest that his website is just another attention-seeking stunt by an ageing former actor who misses the limelight.

"No, I'm very sincere about this," he says, "and I didn't start out wanting publicity. I began by sending a letter to a few friends and acquaintances to say that I was looking for a wife and I created the website as a home page that would explain my interests. Then the media heard about it and, suddenly, there were big stories about me on television and in the New York Post."

In the letter, which was sent to 300 prominent people, he put forward his proposition boldly: "I'd like you, or perhaps your spouse, to consider introducing me to a woman who might make a good match for me."

Caught up in the excitement of the chase, Reynolds didn't recognise the pun in his statement, but the New York tabloids gleefully seized on it. One headline read: "Tobacco Heir Asks Pals for a Match."

Now his website is generating so much traffic that answering messages from prospective brides has become almost a full-time occupation. In two months Reynolds has received thousands of e-mails from women, some of whom offer their daughters or sisters as his mate.

Heartfelt pleas have come from desperate single mothers and from women who are either too old or too young for him.

So far, only a dozen have made his shortlist.

"I met one of them in Chicago last week and we had a very nice date," Reynolds says. "She was beautiful and intelligent, but I told her that I was just looking for now. I can't make up my mind until I've had dates with the other women I've contacted."

Next on the list is a woman from Austria and one from his ancestral turf in North Carolina. To Reynolds, this process of advertising and evaluation is not cold or creepy. He thinks it is perfectly logical and is rather pleased with himself for managing it in such a methodical way.

"In the 19th century, wealthy people were so much better networked than we are now. Society was pretty good at making matches between people whose backgrounds and tastes were similar.

"But today, especially in America, that is much harder to accomplish. We are too isolated in our various parts of the country and also in our different careers."

What Reynolds means is that his future wife has to have some cash in the bank - and he needs to know how much. "Ideally, she would come from a wealthy family and understand the special problems that such families face. There are too many gold-diggers out there and I don't want to be the only one in the marriage with money.

"I'm looking for someone who's my equal, and I'm not flexible about the question of money. She has to have some of her own."

How much? Would at least a million dollars be enough?

Reynolds laughs, as though a million dollars sounds a trifle modest. "Yes, certainly, at least a million."

No wonder he needs a website. How else is he going to find a tall, fertile, 30-year-old woman with good genes, no vices and a million bucks?

Perhaps a life of privilege has given Reynolds the notion that wives can be found in the same way that one might order a piece of furniture from a catalogue. He is so serious and wide-eyed about his quest that he doesn't seem to see anything offensive in it.

"This is a great opportunity to network on a grand scale," he says. "What could be a better way to search for a mate?"

Over the years Reynolds has not had much luck in love. He grew up in what he describes as a "very dysfunctional family." His grandfather was a tough robber baron who chewed tobacco and hated cigarettes, but sold them with relentless energy to younger consumers eager for a "polite" way to use tobacco.

Reynolds senior made his first fortune selling Brown Mule chewing tobacco, after discovering its charms in a strange fashion. One day he was sitting on a train in a small station with a wad of his special blend in his mouth and happened to spit some of it out of the window.

The brown juice hit the face of a man on the platform and RJ feared for what would happen as the bystander charged towards the carriage. But the fellow was so taken by the taste that he merely wanted to know the name of the brand so that he could buy his own.

Reynolds' father led an equally colourful life. RJ Reynolds jun lived extravagantly, marrying often and fathering seven children. He owned a private island, a big plantation and various aircraft and large boats. He liked to sail and was a lieutenant-commander in the United States Navy.

Reynolds' mother, Marianne O'Brien, a former Hollywood starlet, was her husband's second wife. A passionate beauty, she had a stormy romance with RJ and the marriage soon fell apart. But not before she had added two more sons to the four of his first wife.

After the divorce, her boys - Patrick and his older brother, Michael - found themselves exiled to boarding school.

"Between the ages of 3 and 9, I never saw my father," Reynolds says. "When he finally allowed me to visit him it was too late. He was already suffering from the disease that would soon take his life. He died when I was 14. What killed him was emphysema, which was caused by smoking."

His father's lack of interest prompted young Patrick to pen his first epistolary solicitation of love. At 9, he wrote, "Dear Dad, I want to meet you. I'm your son Patrick. Where are you? Love, Me."

But his father was always more interested in yachts and girls than in his own children, even naming his yachts after his girlfriends.

He was on a pleasure cruise in the South Pacific when his son's letter reached him and, though he eventually allowed Patrick the occasional visit, he remained a determined playboy right to the end.

"When he died, in 1964, he was married to his fourth wife," Reynolds says. "The day after his death she gave birth to his seventh child, a girl."

His father took only a brief interest in the tobacco empire and did little to increase its fortunes. Since his death, no one in the family has played a prominent part in the running of the company and, over the years, their financial holdings have greatly diminished.

Reynolds inherited a relatively modest $2.5 million when he turned 21. He earned a little extra money from his early days as an actor, but for the most part he has spent his life living off his inheritance.

It's not clear how much money he has left. He says that a favourite aunt died a few years ago and gave him a "nice sum" in her will. But, for a millionaire, he lives rather modestly. His cottage in Brentwood is tiny and is not lavishly furnished.

His anti-smoking campaign is now his main occupation and he earns generous speaking fees from appearances at schools and other institutions where he denounces tobacco and urges young people to avoid the evil weed.

His crusade does not seem to trouble the executives of the Reynolds company unduly. All the same, his future bride will have to prepare herself for hours of listening to his lectures against tobacco.

When he is in the full flow of his anti-smoking tirade he sounds very much like a Baptist preacher warning sinners of the punishments awaiting them in the bowels of hell.

He has first-hand experience with nicotine addiction. For several years he was a heavy smoker and found that giving up was a tough challenge. He hasn't smoked for more than 20 years and has little patience for those who do.

He has been married once before but it did not last long. "She was a German girl. Her father owned a tour bus company in Germany and they were a very nice family. But we were young and spent too much time running around and not enough time at home. We were married in 1983 and divorced two years later."

In retrospect, he thinks that the demise of his marriage took a heavy toll. "The year of our divorce was also the year my mother died. After suffering two traumatic events in one year I just started putting walls around my emotions and turned away from making any strong attachments of the heart.

"I guess I was afraid of being hurt. It has taken a long time to sort out my feelings, but now I am definitely ready for a real relationship that will last the rest of my life."