INTERVIEW
As she returns to our TV screens playing a super-sleuth, actor Jane Seymour shares the secrets to her age-defying looks and reveals why she won’t marry again
stylist NATALIE READ
Jane Seymour is not the woman you think she is. At the age of 72, this demure English rose of an actor is breaking every rule in the book when it comes to getting older.
In the weeks before we meet, she’s zip-wired in Costa Rica with her grandchildren, boogied the nights away with her two sisters in Greece and posed in an array of swimwear looking sensational (she appeared in Playboy aged 67). She does her own stunts and is currently starring in the lead role in Harry Wild Investigates, which is back for a second series.
In America, where she has lived for the past four decades, Jane has received two Golden Globes and an Emmy to mark her acting achievements. Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, which ran for six seasons from 1983, remains one of the country’s most popular shows, with Jane as the gutsy Wild West doctor.
In Britain, she has received fewer plaudits. Unlike her friends, Helen Mirren and Joan Collins, she has never been made a dame, although she did receive an OBE in 2000.
‘I’m under no illusions about how a lot of people think about me. Bond girl [aged 20, she was the virginal Solitaire in Live and Let Die]. Married four times. Lives in Los Angeles. Seventy-two years old. Must have had surgery… And that’s about it,’ she smiles. ‘There is so much more to me than that. And at the age I am, I have never felt more sure of who I am, and more ready to absolutely make the most of the life I have.’
We are sitting in a modern townhouse in West London, a few miles from the home of her younger sister, Annie, 69, where she is currently staying (and just a short distance from her other sister Sally, 71). She is here to talk about the latest series of the compellingly wonderful ‘cosy crime’ drama Harry Wild Investigates, screened here on Channel 5 and Acorn TV.
Harry Wild (Jane) is a retired English professor turned supersleuth living in Dublin. Along with her intimate knowledge of classical literature (many of the criminals’ clues are surprisingly literary), Harry is a free spirit – abig drinker who is fond of casual flings and speaking in expletives – not in any way the character you would expect the fragrant Jane Seymour to play.
‘Well,’ she laughs. ‘I do drink. I do occasionally swear, but I don’t have flings. But I am, as I get older, very much a free spirit and I loved Harry as soon as I read the script. Before I took the part, I met the writer, David Logan. We drank a bottle of wine together and I asked him who he had in mind when he wrote it. He said, “You. Just you.” For an actor of my age that felt very special. It’s pretty unheard of to star in your own series at 72.’
Not to be shallow, but it is pretty impossible to sit less than a couple of fe
