Jane Seymour has said there’s a surprising perk of being an older Hollywood actor.
The Onedin Line star, 73, who rose to fame as Bond girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die, most recently starred in the Netflix rom-com Irish Wish alongside Lindsay Lohan and leads the AcornTV drama Harry Wild.
Seymour claimed her roles have become more interesting in the later years of her career and have required a more physical performance than the parts she played decades ago.
Speaking to People at the AARP Movies for Grownups awards, she said: “The older I got, the more [interesting] the roles were and the more I really needed every muscle in my face to move.”
She continued: “I really love the roles I’m getting and if I’m playing character roles, which I am, but character roles that are still kind of sexy and fun.
“I think at this point, I’m pretty comfortable just being able to age up and down and around,” the Bond girl said, referencing the TV miniseries East of Eden, in which she played Cyrus Trask at different ages, from 13 to 60.“
So I’ve been jumping around ever since I was young,” Seymour said. “I played older and younger in everything.”
It comes after the actor revealed she escaped her Malibu home “just in time” with only the clothes on her back during the California wildfires in December.
“I just literally had jeans and a sweater, which I’ve been wearing for four days and sleeping at different people’s houses,” Seymour said after the ordeal.“
On Monday night, at 10:50 pm, we got a call from my partner, John Zambetti’s son Johnny, who was in Serra Retreat.
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“(He) saw a glow behind the curtains, opened the windows, saw 10 foot flames, and called us immediately and said ‘Get out. Get out. We all got out just in time because of that.”
The fire wasn’t Seymour’s first near-death experience. The actor previously claimed she “saw the white light” after she contracted bronchitis during filming in 1988 and an antibiotic was injected into a vein rather than a muscle.“
I did see the white light and I did look down and quite clearly see and hear everyone screaming and trying to resuscitate me, which they were able to do,” she recalled. “But when you’re out of your body, everything goes very calm.”
The actor has suffered two other serious health issues. While filming a project, she developed a dangerously high fever from leptospirosis (Weil’s disease), and she suffered pre-eclampsia before the birth of her twins.
Seymour added that looking back on her life, she doesn’t have any regrets. “I really don’t,” she said. “I’ve probably made millions of mistakes but I think I’ve grown from all the experiences I’ve had. Compared with a lot of people, I’ve had an absolutely magical life.”
