May 21, 2025 • 33 mins
When you hear the name Jane Seymour, you might think of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman or her unforgettable Bond girl role in Live and Let Die. But behind the Hollywood glamour is a story of quiet courage, resilience, and reinvention. In this episode, Jane opens up about a chapter of her life few know about—when, at the peak of her career, she faced financial devastation and personal betrayal. After her ex-husband lost their money, Jane was on the brink of losing her home and forced to start over. With incredible warmth and candor, she shares how she navigated that darkness, and how choosing to say yes—to new opportunities, to healing, to love—helped her build an entirely new life in her 50s, 60s, and beyond.
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She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Jane, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jane Seymour (00:00):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Jane Seymour.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. When
I say the name Jane Seymour, you probably think of
(00:35):
doctor Quinn, medicine woman, or one of her many iconic
roles in films like Wedding Crashers or the Bond film
Live and Let Die. But what you probably don't know
is that behind the fame and elegance, Jane has lived
a life marked by resilience, reinvention, and a quiet kind
of courage that has helped her navigate some really dark moments.
(00:59):
I have to going into this conversation, I was a
bit nervous. I mean, she's Jane Seymour, but her warmth
and openness put me at ease. Despite the glitz and
glamour of her decorated life, Jane shares stories not about
her Emmy or Golden Globe winds, but about how she
rebuilt her life after everything fell apart. Jane was at
(01:22):
the height of her career, but privately facing financial devastation
and betrayal after her ex husband lost all of their money.
During our conversation, she shared how she nearly lost her
home and had to start over in true she pivots fashion,
Jane talked about how her lowest moment was a vehicle
(01:44):
for transformation and how it landed her in her most
iconic role as Doctor Quinn. She talks about saying yes
to new opportunities, to love, to healing, and how that
mindset helped her create an entirely new chapter for herself
in her fifties, sixties, and beyond. Jane is a horse.
(02:06):
She's prooved that pivots aren't always glamorous, but they can
be powerful, and I'm so grateful. She shared this version
of her story with us.
Jane Seymour (02:16):
Enjoy.
My name is Jane Seymour and I am an actress,
a producer, author, artist, mother, grandmother and philanthropist.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:32):
We're gonna go we grow in chronological order, so we'll
start with you as a little kid. Tell us about
where you grew up, Like, what were you like as
a little kid.
Jane Seymour (02:43):
My father was an obstetrician and gynecologist, and my mother
was not just a mother and a homemaker. She also
ran an office out of this tiny house, and she
had a company she called Overseas and Diplomatic Supply Company Limited,
and she supplied wine, spirits and tobacco to the Pakistan
High Commission and the Russian Embassy, whilst raising three children,
(03:07):
all of whom she had a year and four months
between each of us. And she had a next door
neighbor was a secretary who came to work and she
was trying to survive a really terrible marriage and would
come and work for my mother and help out as
a secretary. And then we had this dutch Man who
was born with webbed hands and feet, and back in
(03:30):
the day they couldn't do anything really, you know, surgically,
So we had three usable digits and he typed faster
than anyone. So my mother was running a whole business,
and my father was working at three hospitals. And the
three girls were all three girls, and the eldest and
then Sally and then Annie. We all slept in one
tiny room with fold away beds, and when the beds
(03:51):
were down, my mother literally couldn't walk between to say
good night to us. It was tiny, this house, but
the back garden backed onto a railroad and to the railway,
and there was a long, narrow back garden and we
had a washing line there of course, no dryers or anything.
And that became our theater. So my sisters and I
(04:11):
used to put on performances all the time, and my
father actually wrote a rhyming Christmas pantomime. It's like a
traditional English show for us, and I think I played Cinderella.
And we always had foreign girls, who kids, people staying
with I don't know where we put everyone, but somehow
or other. It was always a very fun, exciting life.
(04:35):
And my mother always cooked rice dishes. She lived in
Indonesia for many years, so we didn't have traditional English food.
You know.
My mother had survived three and a half years in
a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia. She lived on a
little house in Stilts in the middle of the jungle.
We literally found it. We went looked, well, not that house,
(04:56):
but that's the tea plantation. And she was very unhappily
married to this man who had a mistress and was
violent towards her, and she ran away from him. And
then not long after that, the war broke out and
her best friend was pregnant and couldn't travel, and so
my mother stayed with her friend and they were then
(05:19):
imprisoned in internment camp where they put all the women
and boys under the age of twelve. All the men
twelve and nova were sent to build the Burmese railways
or something. They were sent away and they were Some
of the women were tortured. They were turned into sex slaves.
Not my mother, but a lot of her friends were
(05:41):
used as sex slaves for the Japanese commandants.
They were starved.
They had to do tenko, which was where they had
to stand in line very early but actually in the
midday sun. They had to stand and in Japanese announce
their number, and it wouldn't just be a number that
they had, it would be whatever the next number was
from the person next to them. That's how they would
(06:02):
count how many people were still alive. So every day
was tenko. She said that was terrible. And they had
a tablespoon of rice and a teaspoonful of sugar and
that was all they had to eat. But my mother
found a discarded iron and managed to jerry rig it
to the electrics of the Japanese and when no one
(06:22):
was looking, they would fry ants and bugs and slugs
and whatever protein they could find on the iron. And
the way you would know that my mother had been
in the camps is that at Christmas she would literally
grab all the paper and the ribbons and hide them away.
She was a pack rack. She wouldn't let Her passion
(06:44):
was to feed people. She just once she had money
for food, That's all she wanted to do is to
feed lots and lots and lots of people. And so
when I'd go to my mother's house until the day
she died, you know, my sisters and I would sit
around the table and we'd be chopping up vegetables and
onions and bits of chicken, and we turn everything into
a Nazi gorang, which is basically fried rice. And of
(07:05):
course a lot of people have said to me, you're
you know that I'm classic first generation of a survivor.
So whatever that's supposed to mean, I think it means
you're somewhat driven, or you get on with it. You
and you you always kind of know that however painful
or difficult something is, it's nowhere near as difficult to
what your mother went through.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:25):
Wow. And so your parents met after the war.
Jane Seymour (07:29):
Yes, and so this is post war. My parents met
in nineteen and got married in nineteen fifty. They obviously
met a little bit before that, and I was born
in fifty one, so they were both playing catch up
after the war. They'd both been married once, my mother
to someone very abusive at who she'd run away from
(07:51):
in the jungle when she was in Indonesia before she
was imprisoned, and my father to a woman who when
he was sent by the ra F to South Africa
to serve in the Royal Air Force, she followed him
in a boat and found someone else, So that doesn't
really count. So really they were just, I think, incredibly
(08:12):
grateful to be alive and to be able to have
three children.
And we were pretty much treated like triplets.
We wore exactly the same clothes, and we did exactly
the same things, and we all learned how to knit
and crochet and sew and cook and dance.
And do art, and that's what I remember. We used
(08:33):
to go to.
Museums a lot. We belonged to a group, the Scientific Society.
We'd go there every week and we would learn about science,
and then we'd put on exhibitions every year at the
Scientific Society, and I would usually do the marketing and
the art work, and my sisters somehow were involved with
(08:56):
the experiments. So my father did the medical side. I
don't know how we did it, but we always, you know,
we did that. We had a lot of science was involved.
And we also worked as little auxiliary nurses at my
father's hospital. So before Johnston Johnson made cotton wool balls,
we used to actually take them off a thing and
roll them up and cut them up, and you know,
(09:16):
make swabs and things for operating out there kids, stuff
like that.
Emily Tisch Sussman (09:21):
And you started acting professionally quite young, I mean not
as a child, but quite quickly. How did you get
into it?
Jane Seymour (09:27):
Well, I did ballet and I excelled, and I kept
winning prizes and things, and then and I'd go two
three times a week. And then the ballet teacher said
I should go to a professional school, and that was
all I cared about, was start. So I managed to
get a partial scholarship to a place called the Arts
Educational Trust. And when I went there, I realized my
(09:50):
parents couldn't really afford the ballet shoes and some of
the things I needed. And they had an agent there
at the school, so I used to work. I started
working as an actress, as a singer, background singer mostly,
and then kind of a background artist, and then as
a dancer who sang from the time I was thirteen.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:10):
So at that point did your goals change from being
a dancer to being a dancer performer? No?
Jane Seymour (10:16):
I actually I really wanted to do classical ballet, and
I ended up doing the Nutcracker with the London Festival Ballet.
I was a politionel that's once that you jump out
of the big skirt, and I was also one of
the cavalry mice, you know, the one on a horse thing.
And then about a year or so later, the Cure
Off Ballet came to Covent Garden and I auditioned and
(10:39):
I got to be one of the quarter ballet For
that I did Coffee of Cinderella and Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.
And then not long after that, I was doing a
jazz class and I did this thing called knee rolls,
and that was it. I trashed my knee and I
could never do ballet again. So we went to the doctor,
the orthopedics surgeon, who said, at that time the only
(11:02):
surgery they had would be very fifty to fifty and
then his opinion it was better not to do surgery
but for me to quit ballet. So I became a
kind of background dancer who sang.
And I was in a.
Movie called Oh What A Lovely War with Maggie Smith and Richard
Attenborough was directing. It was his first movie and I
(11:22):
got discovered literally in the chorus by the top agent
in England and that was it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:28):
Like so many pivots, her first pivot was forced upon her,
but she welcomed it and soon was landing role after
role at the height of Hollywood.
Jane Seymour (11:41):
And my agent got a call from the Bond film
Bond people and they said, we've just seen Jane on
on television and we wanted to play the Bond girl.
So what So that happened when I was twenty and
then the rest is history.
I mean, I went from one movie to another.
I really wanted to be in a Royal Shakespeare Company
(12:02):
theater actress, but I ended up making.
Movies and kind of learned on the job. I think
really Roger Moore is James Bond Double seven and Ian
Fleming's Live and Let Die Black, Queen on the Red King, Miss.
(12:27):
Solitaire.
My name's Bob James.
Archival (12:32):
Bob, I know who you are, what you are, and
why you become. You've made a mistake, will not succeed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (12:43):
Was a bond girl at the time as big as
it is now, Like did you know when you got
that call, like this is going to change my life?
Jane Seymour (12:49):
Oh?
Absolutely, it was bigger then than it is now. I
mean it was huge. They would do this thing that
you know, that they'd search the world and they finally
found the bond girl. And in my case it was
actually a sizeable role. Solidaire was more of an acting
role really than a sort of sex symbol role.
(13:10):
Hardly a sex symbol.
But the funny part was that they were looking for
someone to play this virginal high priestess of the Taro.
And I think I had a kind of look when
I was younger, where my eyes were a little bit
kind of slanty and with a bit of a tan.
I passed for Eurasian and I think that's the other
reason that they had me. But I used to say
(13:32):
to people there weren't very many virgins left in the
seventies in London, and I was so well brought up
I almost counted.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:42):
Although iconic, her role as a Bond Girl didn't do
as much to advance her career as one might think.
Jane Seymour (13:49):
I'd been in England for a while after the Bond film.
I would get this close to doing fantastic roles and
working with some of the great directors, and then suddenly
they'd be told, oh, you know, she's a Bond girl,
and that was it. For some reason, they felt if
you were a Bond girl you couldn't act, so even
though they'd already tested me up the wazoo. So I
(14:11):
then went to America after one of my shows came
out in America. I think it was our mutual friend
Charles Dickens thing I did. And when I was in America,
I met a casting director who said, if you can
lose your English accent, there are very few people who
look like you, photograph like you, and can actually act,
(14:32):
but you'd have to lose that English accent. So I
took that seriously, and I learned how to speak with
an American general American accent, and then when it was
specific dialects, I'd call up an operator and steal the
dialect straight off the phone. You know, if I needed
the South, they'd call Alabama or you know, Liana, Georgia
(14:52):
or wherever it was, and that's what they did. So
I came back to America and my agent in England,
the one who'd found me, had discovered me me off,
said the biggest mistake you will ever make is to
go to America. And I thought, no, I've got to go,
you know, if this woman's right, and so he let
go of me. I had no agent. I came to
(15:13):
America with no work permit. You were allowed to take
three hundred pounds a year out of England, so no
credit card, nothing, no agent at all anywhere, and I
gave myself six weeks to make it. That was when
my visa and the ticket return ticket would run out.
And literally the day before I got a television miniseries,
(15:34):
one of the first miniseries, and then they found out
I couldn't get a work permit, so they gave the
part to someone else. I was devastated. I was about
to get on a flight and my agent called and said,
I've been offered another show. That they had a week
in which to get me a work permit, and that
was the play an Israeli tank commander in an episode
of McLeod. Now I looked to myself in the mirror.
(15:55):
I'm sitting on my hair, long straight hair, and I'm going,
I don't think there's anything about me that says it's
really TENK.
Come on.
But I mean, I mean, yes, I'll play it. I'll
play anything. So I did, and then it was for Universal.
And then while I was in the commissary at lunch,
the people from Captains and Kings saw me and said,
oh my god, you go to work permit.
I went yep.
They said, oh, we have another role for you. So
(16:17):
I literally worked NonStop for almost a year, a lot
of it with Universal, one job after another and the
Captains and Kings. When I did that, it was a
small role, but the network sort and they said, oh,
we really like the chemistry between Jane Seymour and Perry King.
Will you write two more hours with them starring in it?
(16:38):
So they quickly wrote two more hours and I had
nothing but love scenes with him. We used to joke
that we were mostly lying on the ground or on
a bed or somewhere, and I got nominated for Best
Actress for that. I mean that made absolutely no sense
and no sense at all. But so Pivot yes, So
every time something bad happened, something much better happened.
Emily Tisch Sussman (17:05):
While dealing with the highs and lows of her professional life,
her personal life was also a series of roller coasters.
After the Break, Jane weaves the personal with the professional
and opens up about a divorce that took everything away
from her.
Stay tuned.
(17:37):
Jane is a true romantic and even published a book
titled Jane Seymour's Guide to Romantic Living in nineteen eighty six.
And by the time she was twenty six, she had
fallen in love twice, divorced twice, and in her true
romantic way, became close friends with both ex.
Jane Seymour (17:57):
Husbands, two men that I absolutely adore, and we were
very close, as are their wives with me so and
their kids. So it's hard to explain except on your program,
But that's that. Then I eventually married my business manager,
so basically an accountant so, and he represented the biggest
(18:19):
stars in Hollywood, I mean, Goldie Horn and Warren Beatty
and you know, the majors and Farah and you name it, everybody,
and me I was a client.
And then we started dating.
We got along really well, and I thought, well, you know,
the safest, the safest kind of relationship for me would
(18:40):
be with someone that's got a stable job like that.
And we were very attracted to each other, and I
got pregnant, we got married. I was doing Amadeus on
Broadway at the time, and I had baby Katie and
then three and a half years later, baby Sean, and
everything was great until just before two thousand and eight
(19:04):
when the markets crashed. He'd invested our money in things
I didn't realize, and I think it was he'd sort
of out, you know, he'd got too many loans for
too many different projects, and I wasn't paying attention. You know,
when he told me sign this sign that I just did.
I trusted him. I mean the biggest people in the
(19:25):
industry trusted him and paid him for it. And why
if I'm his wife and it's you know, our marital money,
why would I not trust him? But it went belly
up and I didn't find that out until I also
found out that he had been very unfaithful. I kept thinking, well,
maybe I can take him back, and then that didn't
(19:45):
work out because I found out eventually fourteen people.
When he got to fourteen.
That's when I went, Jane, this is not going to
work out, and then I found out I was literally penniless.
The house, the banked house.
Archival (20:00):
I was so in the red, nine million in the red,
with lawsuits from every major bank and the FDICEE. And
I couldn't even conceive of it because, as I said,
I was not a mathematician by far.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:11):
Not.
Jane Seymour (20:12):
And this is at the height of my career. I'd
been called the Queen of the miniseries. I'd start in
everything that you could possibly star in. I'd been nominated
for almost everything. I did one tons of things. I mean,
I couldn't have it. Couldn't have been a higher point
in my life to have it all and then to
have nothing. But I had my children, I had my health.
(20:35):
I called my agent and I said I need to
work yesterday. And I said, I will literally do anything.
And so he called up all the networks and I'd
always refused to do a series. And then one of
the networks, CBS, said will she literally do anything? And
he said, well, that's what she just said. So he said, well,
(20:55):
we've got this little movie of the week, but she'd
literally has to tell us yes, ten am tomorrow. I
read the script at ten pm the night before. At noon,
she has to come in for wardrobe and at six
am the following days start shooting and she has to
sign for five years, even though we can pretty much
guarantee it will never be a series, because in those days,
(21:16):
no woman had ever done a one hour show and
in the lead, and you know, in a series, in
a comedy, yes, but not in a one hour and
medical shows. You know, there was before er and inspirational shows.
This was before you know, Touched by an Angel and
all of that, and family values definitely not and the
(21:37):
Western are too dusty. That's the word, too dusty keeps
coming up. So I did it with Joe Lando, and
we got along famously. We fell madly for each other.
We were both single. We finished the show, we went
away on holiday together for a week. I realized we
couldn't possibly be together. There was, you know, two actors.
It just wasn't going to work.
(21:58):
And that was that.
There was very brief that we were together, but an
amazing bond that we have till this day. Fact I'm
seeing him later on today. And we never thought the
showould be picked up, but it was. But by the
time it was picked up, Joe and I weren't talking
to each other, and for seven years we played you know,
(22:19):
Mikayla and Sully with this unbelievable chemistry, which of course
we knew, but it was really hard.
To work together, really really hard.
But if I watched the show, I would say that
whatever we did, although it was painful, it worked. So
I think there was a sexual tension there, yeah, but
(22:41):
various reasons. I think Joe only found out recently. Wanted
to leave the show after a year and go on
to be a movie star, and they wouldn't let him out,
so he was very frustrated. They were frustrated with him,
They were not nice to him. And I'm the one
that got the brunt.
Emily Tisch Sussman (22:58):
I mean, this role came such a success, so well, huge, huge,
How so how quickly did it go from your darkest,
darkest moment to saying, give me anything, I'll do any
role too. This is the biggest role maybe of my life.
Jane Seymour (23:14):
Well, when they picked it up, I mean when they
when they put the first episode out, it was two episodes.
I think they put it out on opposite the Orange
Bowl and then on Saturday Night to kill it because
they didn't want it. They were making, they thought they
were making kind of cleaning up shop with people that
they had deals with. And I didn't know this, you know,
(23:35):
I didn't know. It was never it was intended to fail.
It was their springtime for Hitler. Like in the producers,
that was their idea, this we can guarantee to fail.
No one gave me the memo or Joe so and
I have to admit, I think it's the chemistry, but
also the writing was brilliant. It was a great show.
(23:56):
It still is a great show, and it's timeless. I
mean it's still playing in ninety eight countries in some
countries every single day, in France and Germany and Italy
every day, probably more countries. So how did I know, Well,
we were in the top ten for those first two
shows when they tried to kill it, they were the
(24:17):
top shows on television on any network. It came in
number seven and number ten those two nights, so they
had no choice but to put.
Us on air.
And then it just had such a loyal audience. Then
it sold globally. I mean it was unbelievable.
I mean, we.
Worked, we did twenty two episodes a season, twenty two
(24:38):
one hours, and then in the few weeks I had
off where anyone in their right mind would have relaxed.
I went and did another movie. So every year I
did that and a movie, And so by the time
i'd made some money on that, I was able to
deal with lawyers and debts and whatever I had had
to deal with. And James Keat was very instrumentally at
(25:01):
helping me. You know, he literally spent most of his
time trying to help me figure it all out. And
we lived together, and we got married, and we worked
together on Dr Quinn and you know, that was amazing.
We had a wonderful life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:19):
After the break.
Jane reflects on how she's navigated the high highs and
the low lows she gets experienced throughout her life. Stay tuned. Well,
(25:42):
so you said recently in a graduation speech.
I love this. You said, do not panic when life
doesn't follow the script.
Jane Seymour (25:48):
It won't.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:49):
And that's a gift you might find years from now
that the best thing that's ever happened to you looked
like the worst thing at first. Rejection, heartbreak, a job
that didn't come. That's just life reshaping your story.
Jane Seymour (26:02):
Well, I'm incredibly fortunate because I have a lot of friends,
people I know who suffer from depression and I don't.
And for some reason I was able to process the
pain and the hurt and the fear and anger and
all the things that happen and kind of pivot turn it,
(26:23):
turn it around, and just go, Okay, enough, I've got
to get the kids to school. You know, I don't
want them to see me crying. I got to get
out of bed. There's things I have to do. I
have to work, I have to earn a living, I
have to you know, take responsibility. And so I didn't
really allow myself to visibly allow any kind of those
(26:47):
feelings to take over. I mean, you know, in the
darkest times, I still had to go on camera and
just say, hey, I'm here, and is it life wonderful? Yeah,
Happy Christmas. Meanwhile, no one knew what I was at
actually going through. And you know, people say, you know,
when you're an actress, you you know, so therefore you
you're good at lying. I'm not good at lying, but
(27:10):
being able to put my you know, big big girl
pants on and not dwell on the negative and be
in the present moment and just say to myself, Okay,
what do I need to do now?
And I think because I did that, and because.
I'm open minded and literally open hearted, I was able
to move forward. And I think you know it was
(27:31):
very much I would say my mother's teaching. She always said,
she said, Darling, in life, everyone has challenges, and when
they do, they close up their hearts and they let
the story go round and round and around, like an
LP record with a scratch in it.
She said.
If you do that, you'll never be able to move
forward in your life. I said, the hardest thing to
do in life is to accept. But if you could
(27:53):
accept and open your heart and reach out to help
someone or be there for someone, you'll then have person.
And when you have purpose, you can feel love for yourself.
And if you can love yourself or at least like yourself,
the chances of you being able to give and receive
love is much higher than if you cut off. I
would credit it all to her.
Emily Tisch Sussman (28:15):
Well, given all this, I asked a question of all
of my guests, So, what is one thing could be
more than one thing, or something we've discussed already that
you saw as a negative or a low point at
the time, but now you see it as really a positive,
like in hindsight really was a positive.
Jane Seymour (28:31):
Well, I would say, the end of both of my marriages,
who were devastating, really devastating, but out of both of
them came, you know, amazing extraordinary life changing opportunities. I mean,
if I hadn't lost everything with David Flynn, I would
never have gotten Doc Quinn and I would never have
(28:53):
chosen to do a series and that trajectory would never
have happened. And I wouldn't have met James, and I
was very happy with James for a very long time.
And I wouldn't have had the twins, Johnny and Chris,
who are fantastic and you know, miraculously we are all
friends now, we all get along really well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:11):
Okay, how does that happen?
Jane Seymour (29:13):
You decide for the sake of the children, and in
my case, you have to live in the moment and
realize the past is done and you're now where you're at,
and move forward and realize, I think you realize that
when you love someone that deeply to have children with
them and be with them for a time, that, at
(29:34):
least for me, the good side of it never goes.
It's you know, obviously not easy. It's taken a long time,
but I'm very much a glass half full person because
I realized that life is short and I've chosen to trust.
But when I've known it's wrong and it's not working,
(29:54):
I've been able to just go, no, this is this
is not going to happen. But I also I think
I've been incredibly fortunate. I mean, I never imagined that
I would find such an amazing relationship this time in
my life ever. And I think because I dared and
I didn't dare at first, I went no, no, no,
(30:15):
no no for the longest time. I mean, he definitely
thought I was just going to put him in the
friend in the friend world, and that was that I dared.
And I think, you know, sometimes you just have to
take a leap of faith and be honest with yourself
as to what you have to contribute and what you
(30:36):
need and what you're willing to give and what that
looks like. And I think I've discovered that the more
you give, the more you get back. People who are
not givers, I don't know what they think they're doing
with everything that they're hanging on to, but you can't
take it with you. I know that I tried that
one You take with you the love you've shared in
(30:57):
your life.
And the difference you've made, that's what you take with you.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:01):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Jane Seymour (31:04):
Well, I can't believe. At the age of seventy something,
I got asked to do a series. So yes, I
don't think I've ever had as much work as I
have right now. But and occasionally I'll go and play
bad golf, and I love to play bad golf. I
thoroughly enjoy golf. But you know, I'm never going to
be a pro, so no worry is there. And I paint,
(31:24):
you know, I love to paint. That's my passion. And
I design with my paintings. Now I design fabrics that
are scarves and kimonos and dusters, and they're all online.
I design furniture jewelry like here the open heart brace.
I know if you can see that, yeah, beautiful. So
I've been doing that for a number of years. And
(31:45):
then I'm producing movies. I've got the rights to a
movie called The Truth About Horses that went to number
one in Amazon when it came out and won tons
of awars. Christy Cashman wrote it, it's brilliant where we're
actively trying to get that made right now, I produced,
of course, Harry Wilde, so I'm involved with that. I
think the secret for me is to be constantly creative,
(32:10):
challenged intellectually and physically, and to have quality time with
my kids and my grandkids.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:18):
Well, thank you so much for sharing it with us. Welcome.
We really appreciate having you on. You've shared an incredible amount.
It's really it's stunning. Thank you so much.
Jane Seymour (32:26):
Thank you.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:29):
Jane is still booked and busy, and in between all
her many ventures and pivots, she spends her time with
her family and loved ones. You can keep up with
Jane on Instagram, so be sure to follow her at
Jane Seymour. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this
episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it and
(32:52):
if you did, leave us a rating and tell your
friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow
us on Instagram at she Pivots the Podcast, or sign
up for our newsletter where you can get exclusive behind
the scenes content on our website at she pivots Thepodcast
dot com. Special thanks to the she Pivots team. Executive
(33:15):
producer Emily Edavlosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
Research Director, Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak,
and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I En Yours
g pivots
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Jane Seymour.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. When
I say the name Jane Seymour, you probably think of
(00:35):
doctor Quinn, medicine woman, or one of her many iconic
roles in films like Wedding Crashers or the Bond film
Live and Let Die. But what you probably don't know
is that behind the fame and elegance, Jane has lived
a life marked by resilience, reinvention, and a quiet kind
of courage that has helped her navigate some really dark moments.
(00:59):
I have to going into this conversation, I was a
bit nervous. I mean, she's Jane Seymour, but her warmth
and openness put me at ease. Despite the glitz and
glamour of her decorated life, Jane shares stories not about
her Emmy or Golden Globe winds, but about how she
rebuilt her life after everything fell apart. Jane was at
(01:22):
the height of her career, but privately facing financial devastation
and betrayal after her ex husband lost all of their money.
During our conversation, she shared how she nearly lost her
home and had to start over in true she pivots fashion,
Jane talked about how her lowest moment was a vehicle
(01:44):
for transformation and how it landed her in her most
iconic role as Doctor Quinn. She talks about saying yes
to new opportunities, to love, to healing, and how that
mindset helped her create an entirely new chapter for herself
in her fifties, sixties, and beyond. Jane is a horse.
(02:06):
She's prooved that pivots aren't always glamorous, but they can
be powerful, and I'm so grateful. She shared this version
of her story with us.
Jane Seymour (02:16):
Enjoy.
My name is Jane Seymour and I am an actress,
a producer, author, artist, mother, grandmother and philanthropist.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:32):
We're gonna go we grow in chronological order, so we'll
start with you as a little kid. Tell us about
where you grew up, Like, what were you like as
a little kid.
Jane Seymour (02:43):
My father was an obstetrician and gynecologist, and my mother
was not just a mother and a homemaker. She also
ran an office out of this tiny house, and she
had a company she called Overseas and Diplomatic Supply Company Limited,
and she supplied wine, spirits and tobacco to the Pakistan
High Commission and the Russian Embassy, whilst raising three children,
(03:07):
all of whom she had a year and four months
between each of us. And she had a next door
neighbor was a secretary who came to work and she
was trying to survive a really terrible marriage and would
come and work for my mother and help out as
a secretary. And then we had this dutch Man who
was born with webbed hands and feet, and back in
(03:30):
the day they couldn't do anything really, you know, surgically,
So we had three usable digits and he typed faster
than anyone. So my mother was running a whole business,
and my father was working at three hospitals. And the
three girls were all three girls, and the eldest and
then Sally and then Annie. We all slept in one
tiny room with fold away beds, and when the beds
(03:51):
were down, my mother literally couldn't walk between to say
good night to us. It was tiny, this house, but
the back garden backed onto a railroad and to the railway,
and there was a long, narrow back garden and we
had a washing line there of course, no dryers or anything.
And that became our theater. So my sisters and I
(04:11):
used to put on performances all the time, and my
father actually wrote a rhyming Christmas pantomime. It's like a
traditional English show for us, and I think I played Cinderella.
And we always had foreign girls, who kids, people staying
with I don't know where we put everyone, but somehow
or other. It was always a very fun, exciting life.
(04:35):
And my mother always cooked rice dishes. She lived in
Indonesia for many years, so we didn't have traditional English food.
You know.
My mother had survived three and a half years in
a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia. She lived on a
little house in Stilts in the middle of the jungle.
We literally found it. We went looked, well, not that house,
(04:56):
but that's the tea plantation. And she was very unhappily
married to this man who had a mistress and was
violent towards her, and she ran away from him. And
then not long after that, the war broke out and
her best friend was pregnant and couldn't travel, and so
my mother stayed with her friend and they were then
(05:19):
imprisoned in internment camp where they put all the women
and boys under the age of twelve. All the men
twelve and nova were sent to build the Burmese railways
or something. They were sent away and they were Some
of the women were tortured. They were turned into sex slaves.
Not my mother, but a lot of her friends were
(05:41):
used as sex slaves for the Japanese commandants.
They were starved.
They had to do tenko, which was where they had
to stand in line very early but actually in the
midday sun. They had to stand and in Japanese announce
their number, and it wouldn't just be a number that
they had, it would be whatever the next number was
from the person next to them. That's how they would
(06:02):
count how many people were still alive. So every day
was tenko. She said that was terrible. And they had
a tablespoon of rice and a teaspoonful of sugar and
that was all they had to eat. But my mother
found a discarded iron and managed to jerry rig it
to the electrics of the Japanese and when no one
(06:22):
was looking, they would fry ants and bugs and slugs
and whatever protein they could find on the iron. And
the way you would know that my mother had been
in the camps is that at Christmas she would literally
grab all the paper and the ribbons and hide them away.
She was a pack rack. She wouldn't let Her passion
(06:44):
was to feed people. She just once she had money
for food, That's all she wanted to do is to
feed lots and lots and lots of people. And so
when I'd go to my mother's house until the day
she died, you know, my sisters and I would sit
around the table and we'd be chopping up vegetables and
onions and bits of chicken, and we turn everything into
a Nazi gorang, which is basically fried rice. And of
(07:05):
course a lot of people have said to me, you're
you know that I'm classic first generation of a survivor.
So whatever that's supposed to mean, I think it means
you're somewhat driven, or you get on with it. You
and you you always kind of know that however painful
or difficult something is, it's nowhere near as difficult to
what your mother went through.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:25):
Wow. And so your parents met after the war.
Jane Seymour (07:29):
Yes, and so this is post war. My parents met
in nineteen and got married in nineteen fifty. They obviously
met a little bit before that, and I was born
in fifty one, so they were both playing catch up
after the war. They'd both been married once, my mother
to someone very abusive at who she'd run away from
(07:51):
in the jungle when she was in Indonesia before she
was imprisoned, and my father to a woman who when
he was sent by the ra F to South Africa
to serve in the Royal Air Force, she followed him
in a boat and found someone else, So that doesn't
really count. So really they were just, I think, incredibly
(08:12):
grateful to be alive and to be able to have
three children.
And we were pretty much treated like triplets.
We wore exactly the same clothes, and we did exactly
the same things, and we all learned how to knit
and crochet and sew and cook and dance.
And do art, and that's what I remember. We used
(08:33):
to go to.
Museums a lot. We belonged to a group, the Scientific Society.
We'd go there every week and we would learn about science,
and then we'd put on exhibitions every year at the
Scientific Society, and I would usually do the marketing and
the art work, and my sisters somehow were involved with
(08:56):
the experiments. So my father did the medical side. I
don't know how we did it, but we always, you know,
we did that. We had a lot of science was involved.
And we also worked as little auxiliary nurses at my
father's hospital. So before Johnston Johnson made cotton wool balls,
we used to actually take them off a thing and
roll them up and cut them up, and you know,
(09:16):
make swabs and things for operating out there kids, stuff
like that.
Emily Tisch Sussman (09:21):
And you started acting professionally quite young, I mean not
as a child, but quite quickly. How did you get
into it?
Jane Seymour (09:27):
Well, I did ballet and I excelled, and I kept
winning prizes and things, and then and I'd go two
three times a week. And then the ballet teacher said
I should go to a professional school, and that was
all I cared about, was start. So I managed to
get a partial scholarship to a place called the Arts
Educational Trust. And when I went there, I realized my
(09:50):
parents couldn't really afford the ballet shoes and some of
the things I needed. And they had an agent there
at the school, so I used to work. I started
working as an actress, as a singer, background singer mostly,
and then kind of a background artist, and then as
a dancer who sang from the time I was thirteen.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:10):
So at that point did your goals change from being
a dancer to being a dancer performer? No?
Jane Seymour (10:16):
I actually I really wanted to do classical ballet, and
I ended up doing the Nutcracker with the London Festival Ballet.
I was a politionel that's once that you jump out
of the big skirt, and I was also one of
the cavalry mice, you know, the one on a horse thing.
And then about a year or so later, the Cure
Off Ballet came to Covent Garden and I auditioned and
(10:39):
I got to be one of the quarter ballet For
that I did Coffee of Cinderella and Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.
And then not long after that, I was doing a
jazz class and I did this thing called knee rolls,
and that was it. I trashed my knee and I
could never do ballet again. So we went to the doctor,
the orthopedics surgeon, who said, at that time the only
(11:02):
surgery they had would be very fifty to fifty and
then his opinion it was better not to do surgery
but for me to quit ballet. So I became a
kind of background dancer who sang.
And I was in a.
Movie called Oh What A Lovely War with Maggie Smith and Richard
Attenborough was directing. It was his first movie and I
(11:22):
got discovered literally in the chorus by the top agent
in England and that was it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:28):
Like so many pivots, her first pivot was forced upon her,
but she welcomed it and soon was landing role after
role at the height of Hollywood.
Jane Seymour (11:41):
And my agent got a call from the Bond film
Bond people and they said, we've just seen Jane on
on television and we wanted to play the Bond girl.
So what So that happened when I was twenty and
then the rest is history.
I mean, I went from one movie to another.
I really wanted to be in a Royal Shakespeare Company
(12:02):
theater actress, but I ended up making.
Movies and kind of learned on the job. I think
really Roger Moore is James Bond Double seven and Ian
Fleming's Live and Let Die Black, Queen on the Red King, Miss.
(12:27):
Solitaire.
My name's Bob James.
Archival (12:32):
Bob, I know who you are, what you are, and
why you become. You've made a mistake, will not succeed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (12:43):
Was a bond girl at the time as big as
it is now, Like did you know when you got
that call, like this is going to change my life?
Jane Seymour (12:49):
Oh?
Absolutely, it was bigger then than it is now. I
mean it was huge. They would do this thing that
you know, that they'd search the world and they finally
found the bond girl. And in my case it was
actually a sizeable role. Solidaire was more of an acting
role really than a sort of sex symbol role.
(13:10):
Hardly a sex symbol.
But the funny part was that they were looking for
someone to play this virginal high priestess of the Taro.
And I think I had a kind of look when
I was younger, where my eyes were a little bit
kind of slanty and with a bit of a tan.
I passed for Eurasian and I think that's the other
reason that they had me. But I used to say
(13:32):
to people there weren't very many virgins left in the
seventies in London, and I was so well brought up
I almost counted.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:42):
Although iconic, her role as a Bond Girl didn't do
as much to advance her career as one might think.
Jane Seymour (13:49):
I'd been in England for a while after the Bond film.
I would get this close to doing fantastic roles and
working with some of the great directors, and then suddenly
they'd be told, oh, you know, she's a Bond girl,
and that was it. For some reason, they felt if
you were a Bond girl you couldn't act, so even
though they'd already tested me up the wazoo. So I
(14:11):
then went to America after one of my shows came
out in America. I think it was our mutual friend
Charles Dickens thing I did. And when I was in America,
I met a casting director who said, if you can
lose your English accent, there are very few people who
look like you, photograph like you, and can actually act,
(14:32):
but you'd have to lose that English accent. So I
took that seriously, and I learned how to speak with
an American general American accent, and then when it was
specific dialects, I'd call up an operator and steal the
dialect straight off the phone. You know, if I needed
the South, they'd call Alabama or you know, Liana, Georgia
(14:52):
or wherever it was, and that's what they did. So
I came back to America and my agent in England,
the one who'd found me, had discovered me me off,
said the biggest mistake you will ever make is to
go to America. And I thought, no, I've got to go,
you know, if this woman's right, and so he let
go of me. I had no agent. I came to
(15:13):
America with no work permit. You were allowed to take
three hundred pounds a year out of England, so no
credit card, nothing, no agent at all anywhere, and I
gave myself six weeks to make it. That was when
my visa and the ticket return ticket would run out.
And literally the day before I got a television miniseries,
(15:34):
one of the first miniseries, and then they found out
I couldn't get a work permit, so they gave the
part to someone else. I was devastated. I was about
to get on a flight and my agent called and said,
I've been offered another show. That they had a week
in which to get me a work permit, and that
was the play an Israeli tank commander in an episode
of McLeod. Now I looked to myself in the mirror.
(15:55):
I'm sitting on my hair, long straight hair, and I'm going,
I don't think there's anything about me that says it's
really TENK.
Come on.
But I mean, I mean, yes, I'll play it. I'll
play anything. So I did, and then it was for Universal.
And then while I was in the commissary at lunch,
the people from Captains and Kings saw me and said,
oh my god, you go to work permit.
I went yep.
They said, oh, we have another role for you. So
(16:17):
I literally worked NonStop for almost a year, a lot
of it with Universal, one job after another and the
Captains and Kings. When I did that, it was a
small role, but the network sort and they said, oh,
we really like the chemistry between Jane Seymour and Perry King.
Will you write two more hours with them starring in it?
(16:38):
So they quickly wrote two more hours and I had
nothing but love scenes with him. We used to joke
that we were mostly lying on the ground or on
a bed or somewhere, and I got nominated for Best
Actress for that. I mean that made absolutely no sense
and no sense at all. But so Pivot yes, So
every time something bad happened, something much better happened.
Emily Tisch Sussman (17:05):
While dealing with the highs and lows of her professional life,
her personal life was also a series of roller coasters.
After the Break, Jane weaves the personal with the professional
and opens up about a divorce that took everything away
from her.
Stay tuned.
(17:37):
Jane is a true romantic and even published a book
titled Jane Seymour's Guide to Romantic Living in nineteen eighty six.
And by the time she was twenty six, she had
fallen in love twice, divorced twice, and in her true
romantic way, became close friends with both ex.
Jane Seymour (17:57):
Husbands, two men that I absolutely adore, and we were
very close, as are their wives with me so and
their kids. So it's hard to explain except on your program,
But that's that. Then I eventually married my business manager,
so basically an accountant so, and he represented the biggest
(18:19):
stars in Hollywood, I mean, Goldie Horn and Warren Beatty
and you know, the majors and Farah and you name it, everybody,
and me I was a client.
And then we started dating.
We got along really well, and I thought, well, you know,
the safest, the safest kind of relationship for me would
(18:40):
be with someone that's got a stable job like that.
And we were very attracted to each other, and I
got pregnant, we got married. I was doing Amadeus on
Broadway at the time, and I had baby Katie and
then three and a half years later, baby Sean, and
everything was great until just before two thousand and eight
(19:04):
when the markets crashed. He'd invested our money in things
I didn't realize, and I think it was he'd sort
of out, you know, he'd got too many loans for
too many different projects, and I wasn't paying attention. You know,
when he told me sign this sign that I just did.
I trusted him. I mean the biggest people in the
(19:25):
industry trusted him and paid him for it. And why
if I'm his wife and it's you know, our marital money,
why would I not trust him? But it went belly
up and I didn't find that out until I also
found out that he had been very unfaithful. I kept thinking, well,
maybe I can take him back, and then that didn't
(19:45):
work out because I found out eventually fourteen people.
When he got to fourteen.
That's when I went, Jane, this is not going to
work out, and then I found out I was literally penniless.
The house, the banked house.
Archival (20:00):
I was so in the red, nine million in the red,
with lawsuits from every major bank and the FDICEE. And
I couldn't even conceive of it because, as I said,
I was not a mathematician by far.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:11):
Not.
Jane Seymour (20:12):
And this is at the height of my career. I'd
been called the Queen of the miniseries. I'd start in
everything that you could possibly star in. I'd been nominated
for almost everything. I did one tons of things. I mean,
I couldn't have it. Couldn't have been a higher point
in my life to have it all and then to
have nothing. But I had my children, I had my health.
(20:35):
I called my agent and I said I need to
work yesterday. And I said, I will literally do anything.
And so he called up all the networks and I'd
always refused to do a series. And then one of
the networks, CBS, said will she literally do anything? And
he said, well, that's what she just said. So he said, well,
(20:55):
we've got this little movie of the week, but she'd
literally has to tell us yes, ten am tomorrow. I
read the script at ten pm the night before. At noon,
she has to come in for wardrobe and at six
am the following days start shooting and she has to
sign for five years, even though we can pretty much
guarantee it will never be a series, because in those days,
(21:16):
no woman had ever done a one hour show and
in the lead, and you know, in a series, in
a comedy, yes, but not in a one hour and
medical shows. You know, there was before er and inspirational shows.
This was before you know, Touched by an Angel and
all of that, and family values definitely not and the
(21:37):
Western are too dusty. That's the word, too dusty keeps
coming up. So I did it with Joe Lando, and
we got along famously. We fell madly for each other.
We were both single. We finished the show, we went
away on holiday together for a week. I realized we
couldn't possibly be together. There was, you know, two actors.
It just wasn't going to work.
(21:58):
And that was that.
There was very brief that we were together, but an
amazing bond that we have till this day. Fact I'm
seeing him later on today. And we never thought the
showould be picked up, but it was. But by the
time it was picked up, Joe and I weren't talking
to each other, and for seven years we played you know,
(22:19):
Mikayla and Sully with this unbelievable chemistry, which of course
we knew, but it was really hard.
To work together, really really hard.
But if I watched the show, I would say that
whatever we did, although it was painful, it worked. So
I think there was a sexual tension there, yeah, but
(22:41):
various reasons. I think Joe only found out recently. Wanted
to leave the show after a year and go on
to be a movie star, and they wouldn't let him out,
so he was very frustrated. They were frustrated with him,
They were not nice to him. And I'm the one
that got the brunt.
Emily Tisch Sussman (22:58):
I mean, this role came such a success, so well, huge, huge,
How so how quickly did it go from your darkest,
darkest moment to saying, give me anything, I'll do any
role too. This is the biggest role maybe of my life.
Jane Seymour (23:14):
Well, when they picked it up, I mean when they
when they put the first episode out, it was two episodes.
I think they put it out on opposite the Orange
Bowl and then on Saturday Night to kill it because
they didn't want it. They were making, they thought they
were making kind of cleaning up shop with people that
they had deals with. And I didn't know this, you know,
(23:35):
I didn't know. It was never it was intended to fail.
It was their springtime for Hitler. Like in the producers,
that was their idea, this we can guarantee to fail.
No one gave me the memo or Joe so and
I have to admit, I think it's the chemistry, but
also the writing was brilliant. It was a great show.
(23:56):
It still is a great show, and it's timeless. I
mean it's still playing in ninety eight countries in some
countries every single day, in France and Germany and Italy
every day, probably more countries. So how did I know, Well,
we were in the top ten for those first two
shows when they tried to kill it, they were the
(24:17):
top shows on television on any network. It came in
number seven and number ten those two nights, so they
had no choice but to put.
Us on air.
And then it just had such a loyal audience. Then
it sold globally. I mean it was unbelievable.
I mean, we.
Worked, we did twenty two episodes a season, twenty two
(24:38):
one hours, and then in the few weeks I had
off where anyone in their right mind would have relaxed.
I went and did another movie. So every year I
did that and a movie, And so by the time
i'd made some money on that, I was able to
deal with lawyers and debts and whatever I had had
to deal with. And James Keat was very instrumentally at
(25:01):
helping me. You know, he literally spent most of his
time trying to help me figure it all out. And
we lived together, and we got married, and we worked
together on Dr Quinn and you know, that was amazing.
We had a wonderful life.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:19):
After the break.
Jane reflects on how she's navigated the high highs and
the low lows she gets experienced throughout her life. Stay tuned. Well,
(25:42):
so you said recently in a graduation speech.
I love this. You said, do not panic when life
doesn't follow the script.
Jane Seymour (25:48):
It won't.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:49):
And that's a gift you might find years from now
that the best thing that's ever happened to you looked
like the worst thing at first. Rejection, heartbreak, a job
that didn't come. That's just life reshaping your story.
Jane Seymour (26:02):
Well, I'm incredibly fortunate because I have a lot of friends,
people I know who suffer from depression and I don't.
And for some reason I was able to process the
pain and the hurt and the fear and anger and
all the things that happen and kind of pivot turn it,
(26:23):
turn it around, and just go, Okay, enough, I've got
to get the kids to school. You know, I don't
want them to see me crying. I got to get
out of bed. There's things I have to do. I
have to work, I have to earn a living, I
have to you know, take responsibility. And so I didn't
really allow myself to visibly allow any kind of those
(26:47):
feelings to take over. I mean, you know, in the
darkest times, I still had to go on camera and
just say, hey, I'm here, and is it life wonderful? Yeah,
Happy Christmas. Meanwhile, no one knew what I was at
actually going through. And you know, people say, you know,
when you're an actress, you you know, so therefore you
you're good at lying. I'm not good at lying, but
(27:10):
being able to put my you know, big big girl
pants on and not dwell on the negative and be
in the present moment and just say to myself, Okay,
what do I need to do now?
And I think because I did that, and because.
I'm open minded and literally open hearted, I was able
to move forward. And I think you know it was
(27:31):
very much I would say my mother's teaching. She always said,
she said, Darling, in life, everyone has challenges, and when
they do, they close up their hearts and they let
the story go round and round and around, like an
LP record with a scratch in it.
She said.
If you do that, you'll never be able to move
forward in your life. I said, the hardest thing to
do in life is to accept. But if you could
(27:53):
accept and open your heart and reach out to help
someone or be there for someone, you'll then have person.
And when you have purpose, you can feel love for yourself.
And if you can love yourself or at least like yourself,
the chances of you being able to give and receive
love is much higher than if you cut off. I
would credit it all to her.
Emily Tisch Sussman (28:15):
Well, given all this, I asked a question of all
of my guests, So, what is one thing could be
more than one thing, or something we've discussed already that
you saw as a negative or a low point at
the time, but now you see it as really a positive,
like in hindsight really was a positive.
Jane Seymour (28:31):
Well, I would say, the end of both of my marriages,
who were devastating, really devastating, but out of both of
them came, you know, amazing extraordinary life changing opportunities. I mean,
if I hadn't lost everything with David Flynn, I would
never have gotten Doc Quinn and I would never have
(28:53):
chosen to do a series and that trajectory would never
have happened. And I wouldn't have met James, and I
was very happy with James for a very long time.
And I wouldn't have had the twins, Johnny and Chris,
who are fantastic and you know, miraculously we are all
friends now, we all get along really well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:11):
Okay, how does that happen?
Jane Seymour (29:13):
You decide for the sake of the children, and in
my case, you have to live in the moment and
realize the past is done and you're now where you're at,
and move forward and realize, I think you realize that
when you love someone that deeply to have children with
them and be with them for a time, that, at
(29:34):
least for me, the good side of it never goes.
It's you know, obviously not easy. It's taken a long time,
but I'm very much a glass half full person because
I realized that life is short and I've chosen to trust.
But when I've known it's wrong and it's not working,
(29:54):
I've been able to just go, no, this is this
is not going to happen. But I also I think
I've been incredibly fortunate. I mean, I never imagined that
I would find such an amazing relationship this time in
my life ever. And I think because I dared and
I didn't dare at first, I went no, no, no,
(30:15):
no no for the longest time. I mean, he definitely
thought I was just going to put him in the
friend in the friend world, and that was that I dared.
And I think, you know, sometimes you just have to
take a leap of faith and be honest with yourself
as to what you have to contribute and what you
(30:36):
need and what you're willing to give and what that
looks like. And I think I've discovered that the more
you give, the more you get back. People who are
not givers, I don't know what they think they're doing
with everything that they're hanging on to, but you can't
take it with you. I know that I tried that
one You take with you the love you've shared in
(30:57):
your life.
And the difference you've made, that's what you take with you.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:01):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Jane Seymour (31:04):
Well, I can't believe. At the age of seventy something,
I got asked to do a series. So yes, I
don't think I've ever had as much work as I
have right now. But and occasionally I'll go and play
bad golf, and I love to play bad golf. I
thoroughly enjoy golf. But you know, I'm never going to
be a pro, so no worry is there. And I paint,
(31:24):
you know, I love to paint. That's my passion. And
I design with my paintings. Now I design fabrics that
are scarves and kimonos and dusters, and they're all online.
I design furniture jewelry like here the open heart brace.
I know if you can see that, yeah, beautiful. So
I've been doing that for a number of years. And
(31:45):
then I'm producing movies. I've got the rights to a
movie called The Truth About Horses that went to number
one in Amazon when it came out and won tons
of awars. Christy Cashman wrote it, it's brilliant where we're
actively trying to get that made right now, I produced,
of course, Harry Wilde, so I'm involved with that. I
think the secret for me is to be constantly creative,
(32:10):
challenged intellectually and physically, and to have quality time with
my kids and my grandkids.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:18):
Well, thank you so much for sharing it with us. Welcome.
We really appreciate having you on. You've shared an incredible amount.
It's really it's stunning. Thank you so much.
Jane Seymour (32:26):
Thank you.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:29):
Jane is still booked and busy, and in between all
her many ventures and pivots, she spends her time with
her family and loved ones. You can keep up with
Jane on Instagram, so be sure to follow her at
Jane Seymour. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this
episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it and
(32:52):
if you did, leave us a rating and tell your
friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow
us on Instagram at she Pivots the Podcast, or sign
up for our newsletter where you can get exclusive behind
the scenes content on our website at she pivots Thepodcast
dot com. Special thanks to the she Pivots team. Executive
(33:15):
producer Emily Edavlosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
Research Director, Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak,
and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I En Yours
g pivots
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