Bio
Winner of multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Awards and recipient of the Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in the year 2000, which was bestowed upon her by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, Jane Seymour's most recent role is Dr. Victoria Stangel on Modern Men.
Awarded a Golden Globe Award for her role as Dr. Quinn, Seymour made history with her six-season Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman series. She won an Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her portrayal of Maria Callas in the TV movie The Richest Man Alive, based on the life of Aristotle Onassis, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actress Award for her performance as the Duchess of Windsor in the television movie The Woman He Loved.
She won recognition for her work in the miniseries Jack, The Ripper and War and Remembrance and for the latter, she was nominated two years in a row for Best Actress for both the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards.
On the big screen Seymour recently starred in Wedding Crashers, with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, where she played the sexually charged wife of Christopher Walken.
In addition to a recent stint of appearances on the TV show Smallville, Seymour has completed filming the upcoming comedic feature Blind Guy.
Some of her other film credits include Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, a string of America-bound British television specials, including Frankenstein: The True Story, Dickens, Our Mutual Friend and King David.
Able to convey virtually any accent accurately, she demonstrated this talent in her first Hollywood starring role in the six-hour television miniseries Captains and Kings. Her portrayal of a proper Bostonian brought her the first of many Emmy nominations.
Seymour also starred opposite Christopher Reeve in the films Somewhere in Time and with Chevy Chase in Oh! Heavenly Dog, followed by the television adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, for which she won the Golden Globe Best Actress Award as Cathy/Kate.
Daughter of a British obstetrician and his Dutch wife, Jane was born in Hillingdon, England and raised in Wimbledon.
She began training in dance at an early age, and was 13 when she made her professional debut with the London Festival Ballet. That same year, she entered the Arts Educational Trust for dance, music and theatre training and danced with the visiting Kirov Ballet at Covent Garden.
Seymour played roles in a range of classical plays and performed in radio dramas. But it was as Winston Churchill's first love, Pamela Powden, in the Carl Foreman motion picture, Young Winston, that Jane attracted the attention of top producers.
Her first television series was the BBC project, The Onedin Line which led to her securing the starring role of Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.
This attracted Hollywood interest, but Seymour opted to return to the boards of English repertory theatres to tackle classic leading ladies such as Shakespeare's Ophelia and Lady Macbeth, and Ibsen's Nora in A Doll House.
On the Broadway stage, she originated the role of Constanza Weber, wife of Mozart in the Broadway hit Amadeus.
Seymour has also emerged as a producer. Through Catfish Productions, she and her husband, director James Keach, have produced, starred in and directed programs such as Sunstroke, A Passion for Justice, Praying Mantis, The Absolute Truth, Enslavement: The Fanny Kemble Story, Murder in the Mirror, Dr. Quinn: The Movie, A Marriage of Convenience and Blackout.
Seymour has also achieved success as an with her non-fiction novel entitled Two at a Time: A Journey through Twin Pregnancy and Birth. In May 2003, she released another non-fiction work titled Remarkable Changes. The book chronicled the stories of several individuals, including Seymour herself, as they overcame adversities.
In addition, Seymour and Keach have co-authored a series of children's books entitled This One and That One, inspired by their altered lives since the actress gave birth to twins in late 1995.
In 2003 Saks Inc. announced an exclusive agreement with the actress, artist and author to develop a branded line of Jane Seymour lifestyle home products and children's apparel in its Saks Department Store Group stores.
Actively involved in numerous charitable causes, Seymour is a member of the American Red Cross National Celebrity Cabinet and works for Childhelp USA, a national organization dedicated to the research, treatment and prevention of child abuse, as International Ambassador.
The organization's Woman of the World award is one of the honors she has won for her social and charitable achievements.
Seymour is also the Honorary Chairperson for City Hearts, an organization that enriches the lives of abused children, inner-city children, and disadvantaged youths, by teaching the performing arts, including painting, dancing and acting. She is also an ambassador for children's issues for the film world's charitable arm, Entertainment Industries Foundation/Permanent Charities.
Inspired by a recent trip to Africa with the American Red Cross, Seymour and Keach have partnered to start the J&J Foundation to benefit children in need. Keach captured the experience on film for an award-winning documentary Disease of the Wind, which won the Lionel Rogosin Documentary Award and Audience Award Best Documentary at the Dallas Film Festival.
The film follows the story of Jane Seymour and eight inner-city children from Los Angeles traveling with the Red Cross to Kenya to participate in the vaccination of 13 million children against measles, which kills over one million children a year.
Seymour's talents as a fine artist led to the production of a series of greeting cards sold on her website to support her charities.
One of her watercolors was featured on a special Private Issue Discover Card and it raised $25,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation at a charity auction at the Guggenheim Museum, while a subsequent painting sold for an additional $20,000.
She was also asked to design a special edition bottle for Korbel Champagne, and a silk scarf for Escada, another charitable endeavor. She recently designed sets and costumes for the Houston Ballet's Five Poems to celebrate the 25th anniversary of artistic director Ben Stevenson.