The day Jane Seymour 'died' taught her everything. Purpose, resilience and how to live fearlessly

Jane Seymour says that life has taught her many lessons but "the most important" came on the day she "died".

While filming Onassis: The Richest Man in the World in 1988, the actress recalls how she went into anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction – and "left my body" before being resuscitated.

"I learned the only thing you take with you when you pass is the love you've shared in your life and the difference you've made," the star of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman tells me in our chat for Yahoo UK's Unapologetically series.

"If you don't have a purpose and make use of this amazing gift of love, you're wasting it." 

The importance of purpose is something the former Bond girl says was also passed on to her by her mother, Mieke Frankenberg. 

Frankenberg spent three and a half years in a Japanese internment camp in Indonesia during the Second World War and used her Red Cross nursing skills to tend to others.

And purpose is something Seymour definitely has in spades. At 74, the mum of six – four biological and two stepchildren – and grandmother to four, is the founder of the nonprofit Open Hearts Foundation, which supports emerging charities to help others.

She's also recently filmed the fifth series of Harry Wild for Acorn TV. In the Irish mystery drama, Seymour plays Harriet 'Harry' Wild, a retired university professor with a knack for solving crimes.

"I feel like I'm in my prime right now," the British actress, who now lives in California, says. And having "grabbed "life by the horns and lived it fully", Seymour, who is turning 75 in February and has been married four times, says she has no plans of "burying myself under a rock" anytime soon.

Has there been a defining moment that's changed the course of your life?

It was the day that I died when I had anaphylaxis shock. I was playing Maria Callas in Onassis: The Richest Man in the World in Spain. I was given an injection of antibiotics and I left my body.

I learnt the most important thing I've ever learned, that the only thing you take with you when you pass is the love you've shared in your life and the difference you've made. The vehicle that we travel in is like a car because you leave your body when you die

If you're not in the present moment and if you don't have a purpose and make use of this amazing gift of love, you're wasting it. It's only when you lose it that you realise.

I have grabbed life by the horns and lived it fully and appreciated every waking minute.

What is the one piece of wisdom you've learned through life?

Resilience. It's how you get up, not how you fall.

I've also learned that you have to accept, which is the hardest thing to do in life. You have to look around and see if someone's worse off than you, and see if you can help, even if it's just listening and hearing someone.

Then having a purpose, that is the key to everything. My mother taught me that. She survived a concentration camp in Indonesia for three-and-a-half years in World War II.

[Having a purpose] It's certainly the way I have lived my life and that I have always found to be the wisdom that carried me through.

What has been your experience of ageing in the spotlight?

I feel like I'm in my prime right now, really – as opposed to what I’m supposed to have done, which is go and bury myself under a rock [and say,] 'I'm retired now and I'll pet the grandchildren when I get to see them'.

I'm a very active grandmother, too. I'm on the floor. I'm right there – in the grass. 

I've been incredibly fortunate, really, because I think 40 is usually when things go a little, like, 'Urgh, we'd rather have someone 30.' And that's when I got Dr Quinn. So I broke that mould right away.

Which of your roles do you feel have been the most empowering and why?

There are lots of great stories I've been able to tell. Obviously, Dr Quinn was amazing but my character in Harry Wild is a gift.

She's an empowered female who is sassy and irreverent and intellectual and not afraid of anything and gets out there and solves crimes.

And my partner in it is not a romantic partner. He's a 16-year-old kid from the wrong side of town who knows people.

There weren’t many strong female leads when you took on Dr Quinn...

It was a huge thing. Only in retrospect do I realise how huge it was. We're talking 35 years ago, almost, that I did that. At that time … they pretty much told me that it would never work to have a woman in the lead. Well, it did, and it still plays everywhere, every day.

Many people are considering working less in their 70s…

I'm not doing this for the money, trust me. I'm doing this because I really love it. Also, it's about having a purpose in life.

I remember Sir John Gielgud when I worked with him on War and Remembrance. We were in Auschwitz and it was minus 20 and miserable. I said to John, 'Why are you doing this at your age?' He must have been late 80s.

And he said, 'Well, dear girl, I have never missed a day's work in my life… if I have a call sheet at night, I know I'll be alive in the morning.'

Forget the vitamins! Have a call sheet.

You played Solitaire in the 1973 film Live and Let Die, how do you look back on your role as a Bond girl?

At the time, it was an amazing experience. Obviously, I was a very green actress.

I probably got the role because they were looking for virgins and they were very thin on the ground in the 70s. I was as close to one as you could get.

It was a great opportunity at the time, but in England I think it defined my career because that's all the English can ever talk about. In America, they don't really care.

There was always this stigma, I think about what happened to Bond girls. Halle Berry and Diana Rigg and a bunch of us have done very well. It just depends what kind of an actress you are and want to be.

Roger Moore used to joke and call me Baby Bernhardt because I thought it was a serious acting role. And I obviously didn't get the memo that I was supposed to run three paces behind a man with a gun in high heels, scantily clad.

What has it been like finding love again with musician John Zambetti [the couple went Instagram official in 2023]?

It’s not what I was ever expecting and it's a wonderful relationship. So far, so good. It works really well. Apart from loving one another, we really encourage one another in what we love to do. And the whole idea is it's never too late, right?

He's just writing and performing and he's a couple of years older than I am. So, I found somebody who has the same love of life, energy, and positive attitude.

Are you quite fearless?

The only failure to me is to not have tried it in the first place.

I have failed many times, but I bounce right back and use it as a learning tool rather than a failure.

Trying and stretching myself and learning and trying something different and new is really important.

What is your experience of motherhood?

The love that I have for all of my children and grandchildren is immeasurable.

Each one has found their passion. For me, successful parenting is having children that actually want to see you and are creating their own group of friends in their own right, their own way of living, their own choices. So they all have purpose.

They all helped me in my nonprofit, the Open Hearts Foundation, which is fantastic. They're really like the apples that fell off my mother's tree. My mother was that way. She survived World War II in a horrible way and had lots of trauma, and I came up from that.

And then my kids have learned to be resilient and to live in the moment and to really care about other people. This whole sense of living with an open heart, the way that my mother did, has passed on to every member of every generation.

This has been edited for length and clarity.