Bachelor Tim Robards reveals he dreams of playing 007

As one half of a reality TV royal couple, Tim Robards is no stranger to the spotlight – but he hopes to further his acting career as he juggles his family life with Anna Heinrich.

When Tim Robards chose Anna Heinrich on The Bachelor Australia back in 2013, it’s likely that not many Australians thought their glossy TV union would last long after the crew had packed up, host Osher Günsberg had taken off his mic pack and a flurry of online recaps had been published, chewed over and passed along by the fans who’d watched their “love story” unfold for weeks.

It wasn’t that the pair weren’t likeable – in fact, with their Ken-’n’-Barbie looks, they were the ideal ambassadors for what was about to become a mega-rating new genre of Australian reality TV.

But surely even the most hopeless romantic could see that love choreographed for the cameras, declared in scripted sound bites and sealed with garish red roses was unlikely to survive in the real world. Right?

Bachelor Tim Robards with his wife Anna Heinrich. Picture: Steven Chee

Er, wrong. Nearly a decade on, the pair have defied their doubters. Now married with a 16-month-old daughter, Elle, and – as they reveal to Stellar – plans for another baby, they’re proof that genuine love can thrive irrespective of its contrived beginnings.

As Heinrich, 35, confides, their relationship may have been conceived by casting agents but it has endured because, behind the scenes, they’ve fostered the same shared values and worked on the communication that’s essential to any successful coupling.

“We went in thinking we’re going to try to make this work and if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work,” she says.

“But it did work. And the best thing about us is that we kept it real. We have arguments, we have fights. We’re like any other couple out there; we have ups and downs, especially when you have a kid. Yes, we met on a show but we were both real about it.”

Robards tells Stellar that while viewers – and subsequent dating-show contestants – might have bought into the fairytale, he and Heinrich refused to.

“It’s very easy in those situations to get swept away but we were very realistic in our approach,” he explains.

“Even out of reality TV, people get engaged after a month, then married after three. Then they break up because it’s all too soon. It’s finding that balance between infatuation and being realistic. I could see that in Anna and she could see that in me.”

As the local test cases for an international franchise that’s since spawned another eight seasons and spin-offs including The Bachelorette and Bachelor In Paradise, the couple had no template to follow.

She was a lawyer who’d never had a boyfriend. He was a chiropractor and part-time model with a checklist of 50 attributes he was looking for in a partner, notable among them that she’d hopefully be a brunette.

“We both actually believed there was a chance that this [love] could happen,” says Robards, 39.

“Because it was the first one, there was no track record. We weren’t doing it for Instagram followers or to become an influencer. Now people go in with a lot more knowledge, and some of them can manipulate it potentially.”

Tim and Anna, pictured with their daughter Elle, plan to have another child. Picture: Steven Chee

But while the couple insist they didn’t intend to use the show as a springboard to stardom or new careers, it has happened anyway. They both appeared in I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and Heinrich was most recently on SAS Australia – rather to Robards’ surprise, they say, since of the two of them, he thought he’d be the more likely contestant.

Instead, he has ventured into acting, spending two years playing businessman Pierce Greyson on Neighbours, before lockdowns led to a quick return from Melbourne to Sydney amid fears he might miss the birth of his daughter.

Now, Robards is looking to perfect his craft by taking acting lessons, and says he would relish a role that allows him to showcase his physicality.

“I’d love to be James Bond. I also love everything that Christian Bale does,” he tells Stellar.

“Neighbours is a soap so it’s a certain format. Everyone is larger than life so it isn’t necessarily the most realistic acting and storylines, so I’m really looking forward to doing stuff where I can bring it down a little bit, and it’s not so soapy.”

To that end, he has a new agent and is working on his American accent in the hope of cracking a career in Hollywood.

“I’m a big believer that if you build it, it will come,” he says.

In the meantime, the couple’s looks, sizeable social media followings and picture-perfect daughter have helped them land a series of paid ambassadorships and partnerships.

Their latest project promoting Nature One Dairy, which makes Elle’s favourite milk drink, the Organic Toddler Nutritious Milk Drink Step 3, finds them sharing parenting tips as they encourage others to recognise themselves as each other’s “Partners in Parenthood”.

Says Heinrich: “We’re not experts but after a year there are certain things we’ve learnt about parenting that we’re going to share. It’s not that there’s a right or a wrong way, but there are things we’ve done that others might find helpful.”

The couple say their relationship has lasted because they share the same values. Picture: Steven Chee

Robards says sleep has been critical in helping them cope with parenthood, and while nailing a routine was predictably difficult to start with, he says that eventually, “We learnt to distinguish her cries so we weren’t jumping up every time.”

And while Stellar has, since 2019, had a firm policy in place around not asking women about their baby plans, Heinrich is all too happy to reveal that not only would she like to fall pregnant later this year, but that in planning to do so, she’s mindful that twins run in her family.

“My grandma was a twin,” she says, further revealing, “and this is something I’ve never spoken about, but I was a twin. My mum was 10 weeks pregnant and she was sitting on the grass and noticed blood running down her leg.

“She didn’t know she had twins at that point and thought she’d lost her baby. But there was a heartbeat in there which was me. It’s crazy to think I was potentially going to be a twin.”

Managing parenthood with portfolio careers is a joint juggle. Robards balances his work as a chiropractor with acting and media gigs, while Heinrich just launched a business alongside a friend, producing a sleep and skin supplement.

One of her greatest challenges, she says, is a profound lack of self-belief, which is why she agreed to tackle SAS Australia when she got that call.

“One thing I struggled with my whole life is self-confidence and self-belief. It comes from my childhood of always trying to prove to everybody that I wasn’t just blonde; I could actually do things. That’s why I went into law.”

While filming the show took Heinrich away from Elle for two weeks, Robards says having sole responsibility for their daughter only brought them closer and says he wishes every father had the opportunity to enjoy the experience.

That said, when it came to getting Elle photographed for a passport recently, he was concerned that his wife might not be happy with the result. As he describes, he took their daughter to the post office where staff told him he would have to untie his daughter’s top-knot hairstyle and smooth her hair.

“I said to the lady that my wife would kill me if I didn’t get Elle’s hair looking nice and not crazy, and that’s when another lady piped up, ‘Here, you can borrow my daughter’s hairclip!’”

As they prepare to celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary later this year, the couple say they believe their relationship has flourished because of shared values and tolerance for each other’s quirks.

Tim Robards, Anna Heinrich and daughter Elle on the cover of Stellar’s March 20 magazine.

Heinrich points out that her husband is challenged by time keeping whereas she’s more organised. But when it comes to keeping the romance alive, he says he’s the one who will plan a night at a hotel or a massage together. She, on the other hand, is constantly affectionate, giving hugs or cuddles when they sit on the couch.

As he counts down to his 40th birthday later this year, Robards is recovering from a recent leg injury that required surgery but says he’s still striving to reach the milestone in the best shape of his life. To that end, he confronts rather than shies away from the stresses of ageing, recently taking to Instagram to discuss how a decline in testosterone can affect men’s lives.

Nearly a decade on from that fateful meeting on national television, the pair agree that it’s the key values they were initially attracted to in each other that continue to cement their relationship: a strong sense of family, adventurousness and a determination not to take things too seriously.

As for his preference for brunettes, Robards jokes that fatherhood ultimately cemented the change of heart that his wife put into motion.

“I’m overpowered by blondes now with Elle,” he says, laughing.

“Finally, thanks to Elle, I’ve learned to love blonde hair – so Anna is lucky.”

Originally published as Bachelor Tim Robards reveals he dreams of playing 007