Seymour comes to area to pursue her passions, aid charity

By JULIET FLETCHER, Staff Writer,

Staff photo by Danny Drake

In 1988, a doctor on the set of a television movie gave actress Jane Seymour a shot.

The syringe contained five times the expected dosage of medication. The shot went right into a vein instead of muscle.

Seymour, who had been playing famed soprano Maria Callas in the film "Onassis," slumped back, feeling her throat close.

What followed was a near-death experience.

"I felt my heart beating incredibly fast, and then stop," she remembers now. "Then I felt I was outside myself, looking at my body, as doctors rushed around. I knew it was my body, because it looked just as I'd seen it onscreen."

Seymour recovered, thanks to some quick medical attention. But her approach to life has never been the same.

"When you go, all you leave with is the love you've shared and the difference you've made," she says.

The event marked the beginning of a fierce, passionate time in her life, broadening to art and outreach.

Part of that outreach led her to Galloway Towship on Monday, where she spoke and oversaw a silent auction that included memorabilia she'd donated to help The First Tee of Greater Atlantic City, which connects local and sometimes at-risk youth with an unexpected pasttime, golf lessons.

Local art fans are also familiar with Seymour's passion for art.

The 58-year-old actress has become an annual visitor to Stone Harbor, where she returns to show her artwork at Ocean Galleries. As a hobby, painting relieved her following a painful and confidence-sapping divorce from her third husband ("When he could count 14 other women he'd admitted to, it was over," she cracked to her audience.) Now, the paintings she produces every year to show in Stone Harbor dovetail with her marketing of a jewelry and sculpture line, based on a single motif, what she calls an "open heart."

All sides of Seymour were on display at the auction - where audience members got a chance to bid on DVDs signed by the actress, who first hit the screen in the 1973 James Bond film "Live and Let Die."

But while the Bond disc was up for grabs, another Seymour disc got more quick bidders. That would be "Somewhere In Time," a time-traveling love story co-starring Christopher Reeves, and featuring a scene showing an out-of-body experience eerily similar to Seymour's own.

The film was critically mauled, Seymour remembers.

"When it came out, people were so dismissive of the idea behind it," she says. But after her own close call, Seymour, who enjoys the film, says she has learned to trust her own instincts.

As Bond girl Solitaire, Seymour, then a British 22-year-old, gained an immediate profile in the States. But, she used her visit Monday, organized by the Women's Forum, to argue that she was far from perfect - and that most children could thrive, as she did, with extra adult guidance.

"At school, no one told me I was extraordinary. Well, they said I was special - because I had a speech impediment, and flat feet," she said, relaxing in her hotel room before the talk.

To the forum crowd, many of them professional or well-to-do women, she imparted a piece of advice from her mother, a survivor of Japanese prison camps in Indonesia, "When you think that your life is impossibly hard, go out and help someone else."

Her impulse within to take direct action is evident all day, every day. After studying reports of water shortages in the Southwest, close to her California home, Seymour and her husband, fellow actor James Keach, helped produce a pair of documentaries about that imminent threat to nations' security, under the series title "Running Dry."

Once she heard forgers were selling her faked autograph for up to $100 online, she started requesting people pay $10 for her autographs, with the money going to an L.A. outreach center.

"And the pros totally know now," she said. "They come up to me already holding cash."

And showing off her Open Heart sculptures Monday, she offered a portion of profits from every one sold toward the sum raised for The First Tee.

A handful of the young golfers came to hear her speak. And while the pop-culture reference for most of the audience might be her mid-1990s television series, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," a few of the fourth- and fifth-graders, all from Washington Avenue School in Pleasantville, had a different reason to know her.

"Were you nervous on 'Dancing With the Stars,'" Jasmin Williams, 10, asked Seymour, who appeared on the show in 2007.

"Absolutely," laughed Seymour, who once overcame her flat feet to train as a dancer, and performed in London's Covent Garden with the Kirov Ballet. "But yep, that was me doing the splits at 57. And I couldn't do them at 16."

E-mail Juliet Fletcher:

JFletcher@pressofac.com