WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Former Caped Crusader owns visual effects company

The wonder of it all

Burt Ward in 2001. Inset: Ward during his Caped Crusader days.

(PEOPLE) -- For most people, there are not enough hours in the day, but they're not Burt Ward. "People will come around our house and say, 'I can't believe how much living is going on here!'" he says with a laugh.

That's because the erstwhile Boy Wonder, from the hit 1960s series "Batman," only sleeps three hours daily, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. "When you're up twice as much as other people, it's like having two lives."

So what does Ward, 56, do with his extra life? He spends his nights working on projects for his visual effects company named, appropriately, Boy Wonder Visual Effects, which he formed in July 2001, after more than a decade of study and frustration at the lack of roles coming his way.

There may not be a lot going on for Ward in front of the camera, but Boy Wonder has worked on more than 20 movies to date (including 2001's "Legally Blonde" and the upcoming action-adventure film "Bulletproof Monk," starring Chow Yun-Fat). "This is a transition to becoming a major player in the visual effects world," Ward says proudly.

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Ward and his wife, Tracy, 40 (whom he met in 1989 when her father, the late corporate raider Victor Posner, sent her to take over Ward's educational video company; they married in 1990), also rescue abandoned Great Danes. In 1994, after moving from Los Angeles to rural Riverside County, the couple and their daughter, Melody, now 11, learned about the number of Great Danes in the area that needed homes. "With a Great Dane, if you take it to a shelter, it's too big for the cages and people are scared of a big dog even though they're sweet, and they're put to death," he explains. The family's 4,000-square-foot home and five acres of land became a refuge for the dogs; Ward estimates they have found homes for more than 3,500 in eight years.

Even with his other pursuits, Ward has not given up acting entirely. In November, he will team up with "Batman" costar Adam West in the CBS movie "Back to the Batcave: The True Adventures of Adam West and Burt Ward," in which the former Caped Crusaders will fight crime once more -- but as themselves. "This is a bigger production than anything we did on 'Batman,'" Ward says.

Ward has fond memories of his experience filming the "Batman" series, a period that he chronicled in a 1985 tell-all book, "Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights." "We partied together, we got in messes together," he says of his friendship with West. "It was a lot of fun." What wasn't fun was wearing his Robin outfit. "Those were the python pants -- they nearly squeezed me to death. And the cape strangled me," he says.

Almost 40 years after debuting on "Batman," Ward, who is now a grandfather -- his daughter Lisa, 35, from his first marriage, has two kids, Kevin, 10, and Katy, 8 -- is content with the way his life has unfolded. "I'm very, very happy. I have a wonderful family, I have the most wonderful people I work with," he says. "I'm the kid in the candy store."