Jane Seymour

Actress

Popular As Jane Seymour (actress)

Birthday February 15, 1951

Birth Sign Aquarius

Birthplace Uxbridge, Middlesex, England

Age 73 years old

Nationality United Kingdom

#1041 Most Popular

1911

He is listed in the 1911 census as living in Bethnal Green working as a hairdresser and went on to establish his own company.

1938

Seymour's father Benjamin qualified at the UCL Medical School in 1938.

He joined the medical branch of the RAFVR after the Outbreak of war, serving in England, Belgium, Italy and South Africa, ending his service as a squadron leader with a mention in despatches.

After the war, Frankenberg continued his career at various London hospitals, including St Leonard's Hospital, Hackney, the East End Maternity Hospital, the City of London Maternity Hospital and finally Hillingdon Hospital, for which he designed the maternity unit.

A close associate of Patrick Steptoe, he assisted in pioneering discussions on in-vitro fertilisation and published papers on adolescent and teenage sexual behaviours.

Seymour was educated at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire.

She chose the screen name Jane Seymour, after the English queen Jane Seymour, because it seemed more saleable.

One of Seymour's notable features is heterochromia, making her right eye brown and her left eye green.

1951

Jane Seymour (born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg; 15 February 1951) is an English actress.

Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg was born on 15 February 1951 in Uxbridge, Middlesex (now part of Greater London), England, to Mieke van Tricht (1914–2007), a nurse, and Benjamin John Frankenberg FRCOG (1914–1990), a distinguished gynaecologist and obstetrician.

Her father was Jewish; he was born in England, to a family from Nowe Trzepowo, a village in Poland.

Her mother was a Dutch Protestant (with family from Deventer) who was a prisoner of war during World War II and had lived in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Seymour has stated she learned Dutch from her mother and her fellow survivors from the Japanese internment camp, who frequently spent holidays together in the Netherlands when she was a child.

Encouraged by her parents (who sent her to live with family friends in Geneva to practise her languages), she learned to speak fluent French.

Seymour's paternal grandfather Lee Grahame had come to live in the East End of London after escaping the Czarist pogroms when he was 14.

1969

After making her screen debut as an uncredited extra in the 1969 musical comedy Oh! What a Lovely War, Seymour transitioned to leading roles in film and television, including a leading role in the television series The Onedin Line (1972–1973) and the role of psychic Bond girl Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973).

In 1969, Seymour appeared uncredited in her first film, Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War.

1970

In 1970, Seymour appeared in her first major film role in the war drama The Only Way.

She played Lillian Stein, a Jewish woman seeking shelter from Nazi persecution.

1973

In 1973, she gained her first major television 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 television miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story.

She appeared as Winston Churchill's girlfriend Pamela Plowden in Young Winston, produced by her father-in-law Richard Attenborough.

In 1973, Seymour achieved international fame in her role as Bond girl Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.

1975

In 1975, Seymour was cast as Princess Farah in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, the third part of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy.

1976

Critical acclaim followed with a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Captains and the Kings (1976).

1977

The film was not released until its stop motion animation sequences had been completed in 1977.

1978

In 1978, she appeared as Serina in the Battlestar Galactica film and in the first five episodes of the television series.

Seymour returned to the big screen in the comedy Oh Heavenly Dog opposite Chevy Chase.

1980

Seymour's other film roles include Somewhere in Time (1980), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), La Révolution française (1989), Wedding Crashers (2005), Love, Wedding, Marriage (2011), Little Italy (2018), The War with Grandpa (2020) and Friendsgiving (2020).

In addition to her acting career, Seymour is the founder of the Open Hearts Foundation as well as an author, having (co-)written several children's books and self-help books.

Under the Jane Seymour Designs label, she has created jewellery, scarves, furniture, rugs, handbags, paintings and sculptures.

In 1980, Seymour played the role on stage of Constanze in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, opposite Ian McKellen as Salieri and Tim Curry as Mozart.

The play premiered on Broadway in 1980, ran for 1,181 performances and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, of which it won five.

Also in 1980, Seymour was given the role of young theatre actress Elise McKenna in the period romance Somewhere in Time.

1982

In 1982, Seymour won her first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television for the miniseries East of Eden (1981).

1988

She received additional Golden Globe nominations in the same category for the television film The Woman He Loved (1988), in which she portrayed the American twice-divorced wife of King Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, and the miniseries War and Remembrance (1988-1989), for which she was nominated twice consecutively in addition to receiving another nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special.

By this time, Seymour had won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988), in which she played Maria Callas.

1993

In 1993, Seymour was cast as Dr. Michaela Quinn in the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a medical drama set in the Wild West which ran for 6 seasons and resulted in a further two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama (including one win), and two nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series.

2000

Seymour was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 2000, was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

2010

IGN ranked her as 10th in a Top 10 Bond Babes list.