JERSEY SHORE – As an actress she is known as a Bond girl in “Live and Let Die,” Serena in the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, the science fiction love story “Somewhere In Time,” and her starring role in the TV Western series “Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman,” but it is a different talent that brought Jane Seymour to New Jersey this month.
Jane Seymour: Up Close and Personal: The Exhibition, provides a showcase for her collection of original art by the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning actress. Her work will be on exhibition and available for acquisition through July 10, at Ocean Galleries, Stone Harbor’s premier Fine Art Gallery.
“I’ve shown at the Ocean Galleries several times. They asked me to fill it and I did. What is really unique about this show is that every style that I ever painted will be on show there. I’ve changed styles at different times in my career and they have some of my early work all the way up to my latest pieces. They have sculptures, flowers, beach scenes, and impressionist pieces,” she told Jersey Shore Online.
Her artistic talent began at an early age. “My mother meticulously kept everything of mine. From a very early age I was drawing and that was a passion. I also had a speech impediment so my teachers told my parents so I had ballet class at school. The craziest thing is I ended up doing all three things: becoming a dancer, an actress who specialized in playing in different languages, specifically the “r” sounds being very hard for me to do in real life and the sound being the most difficult to do and that being the American pronunciation, and then the drawing.”
She has earned great success in the worlds of art, design and corporate entrepreneurship, led by her Open Hearts by Jane Seymour line of jewelry, which launched in 2008. She has taken her Jane Seymour Designs brand to the position of being in the top 100 of Licensing Global Magazine’s list of the world’s top brands, something no other actor or actress has accomplished.
She added, “everything I do comes from my art in the same way my art always comes from life. What is going on in my life. What I feel about things and makes me happy. It is a very healing process to do art.”
Seymour is the recipient of the Officer of the British Empire (OBE) bestowed upon her by Queen Elizabeth II. She has proven her talents in virtually all media, the Broadway stage, motion pictures and television.
Through the popular CBS series “Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman,” she became a role model to young women and girls throughout the world showing her courage to achieve, and improve anything a man can do.
She won a Golden Globe as Dr. Michaela Quinn in the action packed, family drama series which ran for six seasons from January 1, 1993, to May 16, 1998 and spawned two TV movie sequels. “We are all very close. I was talking to (co-star actor) Joe Lando (who played her husband Sully) about an hour ago, Sully and Michaela live on in contemporary form. Joe helps me and I help him when I can,” she told Jersey Shore Online.com.
During the series’ fourth season, Seymour’s real-life pregnancy was written into the show. “We named the child Katie which was the name of my daughter so that is where we took the name from and Joe has four children and had one girl and he named her Kate so we both have a Kate.”
She added that along with the close relationship he has with the cast of the show, the bond she had with legendary singer Johnny Cash and his wife June. The friendship that developed when they were guest stars on the series led her to produce the bio pic “Walk the Line.”
“Johnny and June advanced us the rights to their life and we came up with that movie. That was amazing. We did all the research on that. They trusted us and didn’t trust anyone else and I think we did them proud. It was a movie about redemption and not just a chronological story of a man,” Seymour added.
Her interest in producing led her to meet James Keach. “He was a producer and when I met him, I wanted to produce my first movie and my agent was smart and he said this terrific director who was also an actor and also writes and produces – the two of you together would be great. He can show you the ropes and you can work together on it.
“We ended up getting married and having children and being together for 26 years. We are no longer together, sadly, for about nine years, but I am now producing myself,” she said. Through her production company she has produced and starred in programs as “Sunstroke,” “A Passion for Justice,” “Praying Mantis,” “The Absolute Truth,” “Enslavement: The Fanny Kemble Story,” and “Blackout.”
She went behind the camera to serve as an executive producer on the documentary film “Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me”, which told the touching story of musician Glen Campbell’s farewell tour while dealing with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
One potential project may bring her back to her beloved TV series, Dr. Quinn. “We didn’t know if we had the rights but recently, Beth Sullivan who did the original has the rights back. She was the original writer of it. She put together an amazing script of where the story would go and where the characters would now be. We pitched it to a couple of places but they said no one is interested in westerns,” Seymour added.
She explained, “there are so many streaming channels and so many different places these days. Ours wouldn’t be a remake, it would be a continuation it would be 25 years later and at the turn of the century and mostly the younger characters although Joe and I would be in there as well. All the originals want to come back.”
Seymour showed her comedic talent in the film “The Wedding Crashers” which paired her with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. This led to starring roles alongside Robert DeNiro in the feature film “The War with Grandpa.”
Currently, she stars in “Harry Wild” which debuted in April on the streaming series Acorn TV. She plays a retired college professor who cannot stay quietly retired to the dismay of her police inspector son.
“All the Dr. Quinn fans are all insane about Harry Wild. They’ve gone nuts for it. It was sold globally like Dr. Quinn but it isn’t anything like Dr. Quinn. I play an English professor who has never been married but her son is a detective. She drinks too much wine. She does what she wants when she wants. She is super smart,” the actress added.
“She helps her son as a detective who has no idea how to catch the bad guy. She’s figured it out because of her knowledge of books and intrigue along with help from her 15-year-old sidekick,” Seymour said.
This year Seymour was also featured in the Australian film “Ruby’s Choice” as Ruby, a grandmother who suffers from dementia. The film follows three generations of strong Australian women who struggle to deal with the effects of Ruby’s illness as it threatens to push them apart.
For more details about the actress’s art exhibit, visit oceangalleries.com or call 609-368-7777. The gallery is located at 9618 3rd Avenue in Stone Harbor, RSVPs are recommended.
