Jane Seymour OBE (born Joyce
Penelope Wilhelmina
Frankenberg on February 15,
1951) is an English actress
probably best known today as
the co-star of the James
Bond film Live and Let Die
and star of the TV series
and film Dr. Quinn, Medicine
Woman.
Born in Hayes, London, England to John Frankenberg, an English Jewish obstetrician of Polish and German origin and his Dutch wife, she took the stage name of Jane Seymour at the age of 17.
She has had a long 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 played 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.
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.) For the remainder of the 1970s, she played minor TV roles. In 1978, she played Serina in the Battlestar Galactica motion picture, and then in the first two episodes of the series that followed, until she was killed off, with the role being one of her most memorable minor TV roles. In 1981, she was cast as Cathy Ames in the TV miniseries version of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
In 1980, Seymour returned to the big screen in the comedy Oh Heavenly Dog opposite Chevy Chase and as Elise McKenna in Somewhere in Time opposite Christopher Reeve. Despite Seymour appearing nude in the 1984 film "Lassiter" opposite Tom Selleck, the movie proved unsuccessful at the box office. She made no further major movie appearances until 2005.
Next, Seymour won the female lead in the epic twelve-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, as part of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, she appeared in a lavish television movie series called La révolution française (filmed in both French and English). Seymour appeared as the doomed French queen, Marie Antoinette, her 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 Quinn in the TV series and movie Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-2001), through which she met her present husband, director James Keach. It is well known that while filming the 1996-1997 season, Seymour allowed British rock group Radiohead to record their hit album OK Computer at her mansion. In 2004, she made several guest appearances in the hit WB Network series Smallville, playing the role of Genevieve Teague, the wealthy, scheming mother of Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles). She also made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
She returned to the big screen again in 2005 with the major role of Kathleen Cleary, wife of Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken), in the hit comedy Wedding Crashers. She returned to TV in the short-lived WB series Modern Men, broadcast in spring 2006.
Seymour was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on New Year's Eve, 1999. She became a U.S. citizen on February 11, 2005.
In the fall of 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 started guest starring in the new ABC sitcom In Case of Emergency which stars Lori Loughlin and Jonathan Silverman.
Born in Hayes, London, England to John Frankenberg, an English Jewish obstetrician of Polish and German origin and his Dutch wife, she took the stage name of Jane Seymour at the age of 17.
She has had a long 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 played 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.
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.) For the remainder of the 1970s, she played minor TV roles. In 1978, she played Serina in the Battlestar Galactica motion picture, and then in the first two episodes of the series that followed, until she was killed off, with the role being one of her most memorable minor TV roles. In 1981, she was cast as Cathy Ames in the TV miniseries version of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
In 1980, Seymour returned to the big screen in the comedy Oh Heavenly Dog opposite Chevy Chase and as Elise McKenna in Somewhere in Time opposite Christopher Reeve. Despite Seymour appearing nude in the 1984 film "Lassiter" opposite Tom Selleck, the movie proved unsuccessful at the box office. She made no further major movie appearances until 2005.
Next, Seymour won the female lead in the epic twelve-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, as part of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, she appeared in a lavish television movie series called La révolution française (filmed in both French and English). Seymour appeared as the doomed French queen, Marie Antoinette, her 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 Quinn in the TV series and movie Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-2001), through which she met her present husband, director James Keach. It is well known that while filming the 1996-1997 season, Seymour allowed British rock group Radiohead to record their hit album OK Computer at her mansion. In 2004, she made several guest appearances in the hit WB Network series Smallville, playing the role of Genevieve Teague, the wealthy, scheming mother of Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles). She also made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
She returned to the big screen again in 2005 with the major role of Kathleen Cleary, wife of Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken), in the hit comedy Wedding Crashers. She returned to TV in the short-lived WB series Modern Men, broadcast in spring 2006.
Seymour was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on New Year's Eve, 1999. She became a U.S. citizen on February 11, 2005.
In the fall of 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 started guest starring in the new ABC sitcom In Case of Emergency which stars Lori Loughlin and Jonathan Silverman.
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