Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
I’m in LOVE agaın at 65
Jane Seymour, back on TV in Hooten And The Lady, tells of her joy at finding fresh romance after four failed marriages
One moment she’s seductively sipping a Martini, the next she’s been kidnapped by a ruthless Mafia gang and is being dragged at gunpoint from a car on an ancient bridge in the middle of Rome. It may be 43 years now since Jane Seymour played the tarot cardwielding Solitaire in Live And Let Die, the Bond girl Daniel Craig said was his favourite, but she proves she’s still got it in her new TV show. ‘I met Daniel in London recently,’ says Jane. ‘I took a little selfie and thanked him.’
She’s been bringing a touch of sophistication to Sky’s new action series Hooten And The Lady as Lady Tabitha LindoParker, the elegant, aristocratic mother of the feisty heroine, played by Ophelia Lovibond. In this Romancing The Stone- style drama her daughter is a fearless historian who teams up with a roguish adventurer (Michael Landes) to go on a global hunt for lost treasure in jungles, deserts and underground cities. ‘It was amazing in Rome,’ says Jane. ‘We stopped the traffic at the big sights at the height of the tourist season. It was quite an experience.
‘It’s a quirky and very amusing show and it was such fun playing this ridiculously domineering woman who keeps trying to get her adventurous daughter to settle down and marry. She’s such a tough cookie, and just the opposite of me. She’s preoccupied with what colour roses to have at the wedding rather than with what her daughter actually wants in life. But deep down I do think she would have loved to have been her daughter, and earlier in her life to have gone off on some of those adventures herself.’
Jane is actually embarking on a new adventure, having found love again at 65 after four broken marriages. She’s now sharing her life with David Green, the 67-year-old British film producer and director, who made the 1988 rom- com Buster, starring Phil Collins as Great Train Robber Buster Edwards. ‘I’m incredibly fortunate, I think we both are,’ she says. ‘We’ve been through similar things and have a lot in common. We’ve known each other for 37 years through work. He was supposed to direct me in a movie about Mata Hari which never happened. He also interviewed me for a show called Hollywood Women. So we’ve met on a number of occasions but I never knew him very well.
‘But now is a different time in my life. We both have grown-up children the same kind of ages; we’re both still working; and he lives in California, as do I. We’re both Londoners and we have similar backgrounds, although I didn’t go to Oxford like him.’
Jane and David now live together in Malibu, so would she perhaps entertain the idea of marriage again? ‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ she says. She only finalised a painful divorce from her fourth husband, the actor and producer James Keach, in December, although the couple actually split two years ago following reports he’d been unfaithful. ‘ I’m pretty solid. If I’m with someone, I’m with someone,’ says Jane pointedly. ‘And I was married this last time for 22 years. I didn’t end it, James did.’
For the sake of their twin sons, Johnny and Kristopher, now 20, she’s tried to meet up with her ex-husband regularly since they split up. ‘Yes, I have, I practise what I preach. Sadly James is not that way. My hope is that one day we’ll communicate about the children.’
Jane already had two grown-up children from her third marriage to her former business manager David Flynn when she married Keach, but then she risked her life to have the twins at the age of 44 aided by IVF treatment. She suffered from pre-eclampsia – dangerously high blood pressure – and ended up having an emergency C-section six weeks prematurely. ‘It was a miracle, I was very fortunate. James and I really wanted children, but it was impossible for us to have them together. We tried everything. I’m so glad I did because I can’t imagine life without my two boys. But I was doing Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman [the TV Western drama] at the time. It wasn’t easy, in fact it was one of the most insane things anyone could do and ultimately it became life-threatening.’
While her relationship with Keach has been difficult, she remains on far better terms with her first husband, the theatre director Michael Attenborough, whom she married in 1971 when she was 20. She believes they split because they were simply too young. ‘I’m sti ll very much in touch with Michael and his family, though.’
Jane had made her film debut at the age of 17 in Oh! What A Lovely War working with Michael’s father, the great director Richard, later Lord Attenborough, who died in 2014. She remembers him fondly. ‘He was my mentor and a very important part of my life. I miss him terribly and I’m still very friendly with the rest of the family. They invited me to Westminster Abbey for his memorial service and I sat with all our mutual friends and family right at the front.’
She landed her first major TV role in 1972 playing Emma Callon in the
hit BBC series The Onedin Line, and then came Live And Let Die. ‘I had a big crush on Roger Moore from watching The Saint, so to be making out with him as a Bond girl in Live And Let Die was pretty wild.’
Alongside her role as Solitaire, it’s for her title role in Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman from 1993 to 1998 that she is still recognised most. ‘I was penniless, going through a terrible divorce and owed the banks $9 million [about £ 6 million at the time] before I got the role. My agent had rung up the American TV networks and said, “Jane will do anything.” I thought I was signing up for ten days and was told the series about a female doctor in 1860s Colorado was guaranteed to fail. But it ended up as a global success and ran for five years.’
A former dancer, Jane was confident enough to appear apparently topless in the film Wedding Crashers
with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson 11 years ago. But it seems it was all an illusion, as she insists she was wearing a finely textured bodystocking. ‘No, I wasn’t topless. It looks like I am, but at no time was I physically topless.’
Alongside her acting career, Jane designs her own jewellery and handbags and has a skincare line, as well as painting and creating bronze sculptures, with one of her works, a major public sculpture, going up in Calgary, Canada, last month. She still keeps fit by doing Pilates and spinning. As for her looks, she tried Botox once but hated it. ‘It just made my forehead stiff. I’m very fortunate to have high cheekbones and I don’t have facials or peels, I make sure I have good skin but I don’t spend money on it. And I eat well, in my garden I have tiny English apples growing right next to oranges, lemons, avocados, figs, and bananas.’
She credits her parents with inspiring her and giving her her drive. Her father John Frankenberg, a Polish Jew whose own father came to London to escape the Tsarist pogroms, was an obstetrician, while her mother Mieke, a Dutch protestant, was a nurse. ‘Both of them were very enthusiastic about life. Having coped with World War II, they were so grateful to be
alive and healthy. They just relished all the experiences they could have.
‘My mother survived three and a half years in an internment camp run by the Japanese in Indonesia yet somehow she was able to shut off that period of her life and move forward and be open-hearted until the day she died. She was able to accept that something was diabolical but not stay in the past and not be upset about it.
‘That was the lesson she taught my two sisters and me growing up, that when life is tough, and it will be for all of us at some point in our lives, the best way to heal is to open your heart and mind and be of service to other people. Then you have a purpose. Ultimately, when you’ve been through something that horrific, the only way to survive is to move forward.’
As she embarks on a new adventure, Jane is certainly doing that. ‘I love being a mother and I love being a grandmother now. I’ve got five grandchildren and number six is on the way. Three of them live here in California, so I see them all the time. I take them to the beach to look for shells. I’ve taught them to swim, and we do art together and I take them to dance class and gymnastics. I treasure time with them. When your own children have children, it does feel like life has come full circle.’