Banning Botox keeps my career on the right lines at 71
As she takes on the role of a crime-busting pensioner, the veteran glamour girl says ageing gracefully is making her TV’s go-to old lady
WITH many veteran actresses, age is a delicate subject. Not for Jane Seymour. She brings it up herself. “To have my own show at 71 is fantastic,” says the star of new sleuth drama Harry Wild, “and thank God I haven’t had Botox. That way I get the chance to play interesting old ladies.
“And what’s the point of surgery? There are plenty of 20 or 30 year olds out there,” she shrugs. “I’m blessed that I’ve always been able to play about ten years younger than I actually am but I’m very happy in my 70s.”
When we meet at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Jane is in an elegant red suit, with a hint of grey in her long auburn hair and characterful lines in all the right places.
She is the very definition of ageing gracefully and naturally, beaming as she continues: “I feel like I’m having a renaissance but then these things happen in cycles.
“When I did Wedding Crashers [in 2005] no one believed I could do comedy but I became the go-to comedy girl. How fun is that? Now I’m the go-to grey-haired lady. I love it.”
In her new show, Seymour plays Harriet “Harry” Wild, a retired English literature professor in Ireland who discovers she has a knack for solving crimes.
Creator David Logan wrote it with her in mind. She says: “When we met he told me I was his first choice, we had a glass of wine to get to know each other, then five glasses later we’d developed the character. I’m so happy with the end result.
“My press agent and everyone on my team think it’s the best thing I’ve done.They think it’s my best work.”
Seymour is now more than five decades into a career that began with a cameo in Richard Attenborough’s 1969 musical comedy Oh!What a LovelyWar.
COMING to fame in the early 1970s in TV’s The Onedin Line and – perhaps most memorably – as a Bond girl in Live And Let Die, Seymour has had quite a few renaissances in her time: Winning a Golden Globe for East Of Eden, enjoying a six-series stint on Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman while juggling sideline careers as a writer of self-help books and an artist.
Not for her the so-called Bond girl curse, where appearing as a conquest for the womanising secret agent forever condemns the actress’s career to glamorous but insignificant cameos.
Apart from one brief self-imposed hiatus, of which more shortly, the Uxbridge-born actress has worked steadily on both sides of the pond. Yet, as the Bond movies mark their 60-year milestone with no sign of losing their audience, she recalls how landing the part of psychic Solitaire in Roger Moore’s first outing as 007 didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.
“I was the only woman in the world who wasn’t trying out for that role but they saw me in The Onedin Line on TV and that’s how I got the job.
“I was playing a virgin in that so I guess that’s why they thought of me to play a virgin in Live And Let Die.
“I was so green and I didn’t know what was going on, but at least I’d done a TV series so I knew how to act.”
As to where she stands on the idea of a female Bond, she shrugs her shoulders.
“They ran out of actual Ian Fleming stories a long time ago so if they want to try it with a woman then why not? You have
women action heroes now and OK, it wouldn’t be James Bond as such but could you have a 007 who is a female? Definitely.”
Second World War miniseries War And Remembrance, with its depiction of the Holocaust in scenes filmed at Auschwitz in 1989, remains dear to Seymour’s heart. Her father was Jewish and a lot of his family were killed in the death camps at Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen, whilst her Dutch mother was a survivor of the Japanese internment camp in Indonesia.
“So I wanted that role more than life itself,” she says. “Even though I didn’t know half of what happened to my family because my mother could never bring herself to talk about it, the subject matter was in my very soul.”
Most of the crew were German and told her they saw it as just another job.
“But when filming wrapped after nine months the same guys who’d told me it was no big deal looked at me with tears in their eyes and said, ‘You have no idea how hard it is for our generation to have to deal with the fact the parents and grandparents we love were part of this terrible atrocity’. They said they carried such guilt and such shame.” Dr Quinn, which began its six-season run in 1993, couldn’t have come at a better time. Her third marriage to businessman David Flynn (with whom she had two children, Katherine and Sean) collapsed when she learnt he’d had a string of affairs and had squandered her money.
“I found out I’d lost everything,” she sighs. “My husband admitted to being with 14 other women, including two nannies, and he was a drug addict and alcoholic, which at the time I knew nothing about.” There’s a bitter, ironic tinge to her laugh as she adds: “I felt like I was falling down a big black hole but I had two children and I had to get up and keep going for their sake. I called my agent and said ‘I’ll do anything, I have to work right away, call the networks.’”
Having earned the unofficial title Queen of the Miniseries, she was immediately offered the role of Michaela Quinn, who sets up her own medical practice in the Wild West of 1867 whilst raising a family.
At the time Paramount Pictures was developing a comedy film for her and, when she told them about the clash, execs said: “You can do Dr
‘I’m blessed I’ve been able to play about ten years younger than I am but I’m very happy in my 70s’
Quinn because it will never be a series. It’s a woman in the lead, that doesn’t work. It’s a medical show, that doesn’t work. It’s dusty (meaning a Western), it’s historical and it’s about family values.
“There’s five reasons why you don’t have to worry. You’ll be available for us to do this nice little movie.”
The nice little movie never got made. The miniseries was a huge success. “And like Harry Wild I would say it ended up being written for me,” Seymour continues. “I said to them ‘How about if any of us have ideas for our characters we can pitch them?’
“So a lot of the ideas for Dr Quinn came directly from me or the other actors. It was great and we all felt we had some say in it.”
Seymour strikes me as strong, confident and nobody’s fool. She recently revealed she suffered her own #MeToo moment back in the day and refused to give in to a big-name producer’s demands.
SHE won’t name the now-deceased man in question but elaborates: “My agent told me I was doing a screen test but basically I was threatened and told if I didn’t have sex with him I’d not only not get to do the film, I’d also never work again anywhere in the world. He was that powerful.
“I walked away from the business for a year and didn’t speak about it at the time but I eventually spoke up because I thought young actresses should know and young actors too because, trust me, it happens to men as well.”
Jane’s first marriage was to stage director Michael Attenborough when she was just 20
years old. Her second was to Attenborough’s best friend Geoffrey Planer. Then came Flynn and finally actor James Keach, with whom she had twins John and Kristopher.
Now in a relationship with producer David Green, she tries to remain friends with her exes.
“There are moments when I’m not thrilled with some of their choices but especially when someone is a father to your children you have to find a way to make things work,” she admits.
“And I don’t regret any of those previous relationships at all. I have the most fantastic children and incredible memories.
“I’ve managed to do something not a lot of actresses have been able to do, which is to juggle being a very hands-on mother with filming all over the place.”
Career-wise she couldn’t be happier either. Harry Wild has just been commissioned for a second series.
“And I honestly think I’m a better actress now than I ever was. Like Laurence Olivier said, there are no small parts, just small actors.
“I’m as happy saying three lines here and there as I am starring in my own show.”
She grins: “Whatever it is, bring it on!”