Jane Says
At the present time, Jane Seymour is not allowed to talk about her movie and television career.
She is prohibited from doing so by SAG-AFTRA, an organization that launched a strike action against Hollywood studios on July 13.
Seymour is the featured speaker today at today’s annual meeting and awards ceremony of Aging & In-Home Services of Northeast Indiana.
Some might assume that not being able to talk to Seymour about her movie and television career is akin to not being able to talk to Orville Reddenbacher about popcorn.
There probably are more than a few movie stars who would go blank if you asked them to talk about something other than their careers. I’m not going to name names.
But Seymour is not one of these. She is a multifaceted person and only some of those facets gleam on screens.
Aging and In-Home Services of Northeast Indiana is a social service organization that serves seniors and people with disabilities of all ages, and Seymour said she got an early taste of caregiving when she joined the English Red Cross at the age of 10.
“They gave me the job of going to play with a girl with cerebral palsy,” she said. “Her mother was stressed beyond belief. And I realized that it was so hard on her that she needed respite. So I developed a relationship with this girl. I came back many times, because it gave me an amazing sense of purpose.”
Seymour’s father was a highly respected gynecologist and obstetrician and she watched surgeries being performed when she was a young girl.
“I used to see bloody gauzes everywhere, blood everywhere,” she said. “I loved watching surgery. I have no qualms at all. If someone gets hurt or some drama happens – medically, I go very calm. Like my father did, I go into doctor mode. I don’t get I don’t get involved emotionally.”
One surprising thing about Seymour is that she’s earthy, not ethereal. If you fell in love with as “Somewhere in Time’s” Elise McKenna (a movie she didn’t discuss with me, I swear), you might assume that she is a china doll come to life.
But she’s brash and forthright and uses profanity on occasion. If these revelations are threatening to ruin your day, avert your gaze now.
“There’s me and there’s this actress who shows up and does stuff called Jane Seymour. And we’re the same person. It’s just that, you know: Sometimes I’m supposed to walk a red carpet and sometimes I’ll be cleaning up (expletive) or I’m covered in mud. I’m a very ordinary down-to-earth person.”
She is often described as one of the most beautiful women in the world and one aspect of life that can be difficult for anyone thus described is aging in the public eye.
But Seymour said she is comfortable in her own skin.
She admits to having had an eye lift and some breast work done to address the effects of breastfeeding, but she said she will never undergo the extreme plastic surgeries to which some celebrities submit in an effort to help them look as much like teenagers as possible.
“Maybe I do look older, but I look authentically me,” she said. “I’m an actress, so I pride myself on being a blank canvas. How can I become a character when I can’t move all the muscles in my face, when I can’t manifest those expressions?”
“It’s like being a cyclist without a bicycle,” Seymour said.
Seymour always tries to look the best she can but she said she is “not trying not to be a 72-year-old woman.”
“If somebody mistakes me on a good day with the light in the right direction for somebody in her 50s, I’m very happy,” she said.
The good thing about getting old in Hollywood is that studios start offering you more interesting roles than they offered you before.
“Character parts,” she said, with great savor.
When she is not acting, Seymour is making visual art.
Her present success as an artist can be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the “worst divorce ever.”
“I lose everything financially, emotionally, physically,” she said. “I am shaking, I just don’t even know how to keep going. But I have to because I have two small children. They have to go to school. They have to be fed. They have to not live in fear. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. My mother’s always said there’s always someone worse off than you. So you always give back and help others.”
Seymour got involved in a fundraiser for a child abuse organization where she paid money she didn’t have for a silent auction item: An artist offering to come to someone’s home and draw their children.
When the artist heard about Seymour’s plight and saw some art she’d created long before, he offered to show her watercolor techniques.
“By the time I’d done my third or fourth watercolor,” she said, “I ended up in a book called ‘Actors as Artists.’ And then Discover Card came to me and asked if they could take one of my paintings and put it on a Discover card. And it showed three of my paintings at the Guggenheim. Pretty auspicious start.”
Seymour went on to establish the Open Heart Foundation which curates small non-profit organizations and helps them achieve their goals. She and her daughter, Katie Flynn, are working on an app that would be something like an altruistic Tinder. It would connect nonprofits with volunteers and other individuals who want to help.
A metaphor that has kept Seymour going through life is that of the wave. Sometimes you’re on the crest of one and sometimes you’re in a trough thinking another wave won’t come.
But another wave always comes.
“The energy of that water keeps going,” she said. “And if your mind and your heart are open, new water will connect to new opportunities, new relationships, new ways of dealing with things. So you take the highs, the lows and the letting go and you create a new way.”