Jane Seymour (actress)

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Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour in 1994
Born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg
February 15, 1951 (1951-02-15) (age 57)
Hayes, London, England
Spouse(s) Michael Attenborough (1971-1973)
Geoffrey Planer (1977-1978)
David Flynn (1981-1992)
James Keach (1993-)
Official website

Jane Seymour, OBE (born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg on February 15, 1951) is an English actress best known as the Bond girl in the James Bond film Live and Let Die and as the star of the American television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and its telefilm sequels.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg was born in Hayes, London, England, to John Frankenberg, an English, Jewish obstetrician of Polish and German origin, and his Dutch wife, Mieke Frankenberg, who survived Japanese prison camps during World War II and cared for other prisoners with no medicine and only relying on her Red Cross training. John died in 1990 after 40 years of marriage, and Mieke died on October 2, 2007. Their daughter took the stage name Jane Seymour, also the name of King Henry VIII's third wife, at the age of 17. She was educated at the independent The Arts Educational School in Tring, Hertfordshire, in England.

[edit] Acting career

Seymour has had a long acting career in both film and television, beginning in 1969 with an uncredited role in Richard Attenborough's film version of Oh! What a Lovely War. Soon afterward she married Attenborough's son, Michael Attenborough. Her first major film role was as Lillian Stein, a Jewish woman seeking shelter from the Nazis with a Danish Christian family in the 1970 war drama The Only Way.

From 1972 to 1973, she gained her first major TV role as Emma Callon in the successful 1970s series The Onedin Line. During this time she appeared as female lead Prima in the two-part TV mini-series Frankenstein: The True Story and as Winston Churchill's lover Pamela Plowden in another of the films produced by her father-in-law, Young Winston. She also drew her first major international attention as Bond girl Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. IGN ranked her as 10th in a Top 10 Bond Babes list.[1]

Seymour divorced Michael Attenborough in 1973. She then took only two minor TV roles until cast as Princess Farah in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, the third part of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy, in 1975. (The film was not released, however, until its stop motion animation sequences had been completed in 1977.) In 1978, she played Serina in the Battlestar Galactica motion picture, and then in the first two episodes of the series that followed, until the character was killed. In 1981, she was cast as Cathy Ames in the TV miniseries of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. She also played the role of an undercover reporter in a TV movie about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

In 1980, Seymour returned to the big screen in the comedy Oh Heavenly Dog opposite Chevy Chase, and as Elise McKenna in the romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time opposite Christopher Reeve. Seymour appeared nude in the 1984 film Lassiter, co-starring Tom Selleck, but in 1987 she posed semi-nude pictorial in Playboy magazine.

Seymour won the female lead in the 12-part TV miniseries, War and Remembrance (1988), in which she played Natalie Henry, an American Jewish woman trapped in Europe during World War II. The series was based on the successful novel by Herman Wouk, and is noted for its accurate and graphic depiction of the Holocaust.

In 1989, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, Seymour appeared in the television movie La révolution française (filmed in both French and English). Seymour appeared as the doomed French queen, Marie Antoinette; the actress' two children — Katherine and Sean — appeared as the queen's children.

Seymour continued to take numerous roles in TV movies and series, most notably as Dr. Michaela "Mike" Quinn in the TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and its TV-movie sequels (1993-2001), through which she met her fourth husband, actor-director James Keach. In 2004, she made several guest appearances in the WB Network series Smallville, playing Genevieve Teague, the wealthy, scheming mother of Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles). She also made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Seymour returned to the big screen in 2005 with playing Kathleen Cleary, wife of fictional U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary (Christopher Walken), in the comedy Wedding Crashers. She returned to TV in the short-lived WB series Modern Men, broadcast in spring 2006.

In fall 2006, Seymour guest-starred as a law-school professor on an episode of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother and as a wealthy client on the FOX legal drama Justice. In 2007, she guest-starred in the ABC sitcom In Case of Emergency, which stars Lori Loughlin and Jonathan Silverman. She also appeared in ITV's Marple: Ordeal By Innocence based on the Agatha Christie novel. She was a contestant on season five of the U.S. reality show Dancing with the Stars, which on the 7th week of competition, she was eliminated. Seymour also currently fronts an advertising campaign for the Scottish furniture chain Reid.

In 2008 she began to 'star' in a series of commercials for Reid Furniture in the UK.

[edit] Personal life

Seymour has heterochromia: where her right eye is hazel and her left is green. In 2007, she admitted to having undergone plastic surgery, including breast augmentation and eye lift.[2]

Seymour has been married four times, and has four children:

  • 1971-1973: Michael Attenborough
  • 1977-1978: Geoffrey Planer
  • 1981-1992: David Flynn (with whom she had two children, Katherine, born 1981; and Sean, born 1986. Her daughters appeared with her as "Katie Flynn" and "Jenni Flynn" in the infomercial for cosmetics line "Natural Advantage by Jane Seymour.")
  • 1993 to present: James Keach (with whom she had twins Johnny and Kris, born 1995, named after family friends Johnny Cash and Christopher Reeve)

In 1984, Seymour bought with then-husband David Flynn the Grade One listed St Catherine's Court for £350,000, located in the village of St Catherine, near Bath, Somerset. After spending £3 million on refurbishments, she spent her summers at the house and her winters in Malibu. After her divorce from Flynn and marriage to Keach, she spent more time in America, and made little use of the house, so she began to rent it out. In 1994, during that season's filming for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, she rented it to English rock group Radiohead, who recorded their album OK Computer at the house. In May 2007, she was granted a 24-hour alcohol and entertainment licence under new UK regulations. However, this caused much disturbance with neighbours, who claimed the access lane was too thin and the noise too excessive. Seymour won the court battle, but sold the house in November 2007.[3]

Seymour was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on New Year's Eve, 1999. She became a U.S. citizen on February 11, 2005.

2008- is the new face of CC aka Country Casuals- formerly Selina Scott

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Film

[edit] Television

Title Year Role Notes
Battlestar Galactica 1978 Serina Appeared in first five episodes
East of Eden 1981 Cathy Ames
Sunstroke 1992 Teresa Winters co-executive producer
Praying Mantis 1993 Linda Crandell executive producer
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman 1993-1998 Dr. Michaela Quinn
A Passion for Justice: The Hazel Brannon Smith Story 1994 Hazel Brannon Smith executive producer
Dharma and Greg 1998 Herself Season 1 Episode 19, Dharma's Tangled Web
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Heart Within 2001 Dr. Michaela Quinn
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit 2004 Debra Connor 1 episode
Smallville 2004-2005 Genevieve Teague Recurring character
How I Met Your Mother 2006 Professor Lewis
Dear Prudence 2008 Prudence McCoy Hallmark Channel

[edit] References

  1. ^ IGN: Top 10 Bond Babes
  2. ^ Daily Mail article
  3. ^ 'Neighbour from hell' Jane Seymour sells mansion after row with residents Daily Mail - 6 December 2007

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Awards
Preceded by
None		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made of Television
1981
for East of Eden		 Succeeded by
Ingrid Bergman
for A Woman Called Golda
Preceded by
Claire Danes
for My So-Called Life		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series
1996
for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman		 Succeeded by
Gillian Anderson
for The X-Files
v • d • e
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Miniseries or a Movie

Esther Rolle (1979) · Mare Winningham (1980) · Jane Alexander (1981) · Penny Fuller (1982) · Jean Simmons (1983) · Roxana Zal (1984) · Kim Stanley (1985) · Colleen Dewhurst (1986) · Piper Laurie (1987) · Jane Seymour (1988) · Colleen Dewhurst (1989) · Eva Marie Saint (1990) · Ruby Dee (1991) · Amanda Plummer (1992) · Mary Tyler Moore (1993) · Cicely Tyson (1994) · Judy Davis / Shirley Knight (1995) · Greta Scacchi (1996) · Diana Rigg (1997) · Mare Winningham (1998) · Anne Bancroft (1999) · Vanessa Redgrave (2000)
Persondata
NAME Seymour, Jane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH