By George Lang
The Oklahoman
Jane Seymour took a chance with a risky, risque role, and she is reaping the
rewards. As Kathleen Cleary, the sexually ravenous socialite mother in "Wedding
Crashers," Seymour goes semi-nude at 54 when many actresses in her age
group would be adding layers, not removing them.
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"I read the script, and I knew they were casting for the role of Kathleen
Cleary, and I thought it was hysterical," Seymour said in a recent phone
interview. "I loved the scene, but I when I first read it, I thought,
'Oh my God, she's naked. ... I can't do that to my audience.' I closed the
script and then opened it again and thought, 'This is too funny. There has
to be a way for me to do this.'"
The scene in question is one of the most memorable in "Wedding Crashers" --
one of the few in which an actor besides Vince Vaughn gets to run away with
the laughs.
Strangely, Seymour had to audition for the role -- her first audition since
she was 17. The actress, whose breakout role came in 1973 as Solitaire in the
James Bond film "Live and Let Die," had a history of sexy roles,
but she spent most of the '90s as the prim Dr. Michaela Quinn on CBS' family
friendly frontier melodrama, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." That changed
how people thought of Seymour.
Though she is proud of her work on the series, she recognizes that casting
directors started seeing her only as a dramatic actress from television. She
said she is already reaping the benefits of "Wedding Crashers," a
wild and unrestrained comedy about two aging adolescents (Owen Wilson and Vince
Vaughn) who spend three weeks out of every year attending weddings and hitting
on the most beautiful guests.
"I am now thought of as a comedian," she said. "I think I really
had to shake off that 'Dr. Quinn' image with people in the industry. I'm glad
I did it ('Dr. Quinn'), but I think it held me back a little bit."
That chaste image, it turns out, never resonated with "Wedding Crashers" director
David Dobkin, who only remembered her from her days as a Bond girl, and Seymour
said she now finds herself being flattered by men 20 years her junior.
"Yeah, it's really cool! A lot of guys who are, like, 30, think I'm a
contemporary of theirs, until they realize I did my James Bond role before
they were born," Seymour said. "I don't feel old; I feel young. This
chronological age thing is a bit bizarre, but I have young children, I hang
out mostly with young people, and I'm hanging out with the new, young filmmakers
coming up. I don't feel like I'm part of the generation that is sitting down
and saying, 'Well, in the good old days ... .' I feel like I'm on the edge
of what's happening, and I'm happy to be there. It's fantastic."
Seymour said she has a "pretty good radar" for roles, an ability
that served her well with 1980's "Somewhere in Time," a time-travel
romance in which she played Elise McKenna, an actress in the early 1900s pursued
by a time traveler (Christopher Reeve) who fell in love with an 80-year-old
photo of her. The film was released during a Screen Actors Guild strike, so
it received little promotion, and critics were less than kind. Seymour said
she "wanted to make that movie more than life itself," and was saddened
when it disappeared quickly from theaters.
Still, that memorable tear-jerker had life in it. Over the years, "Somewhere
in Time" became a cult film, and Seymour still is amazed at how many people
consider it one of their favorite romances.
"Chris and I used to laugh about the fact that this movie we both believed
in had been discovered, and new audiences continue to discover it," Seymour
said about her late co-star. "My 20-year-old daughter said it is the No.
1 date cult movie in college."
Now, she hopes "Wedding Crashers" will have a similar fate as a
comedic classic, and she is happy that the film has cast her in a new light.
"I knew I could be funny, and I knew nobody thought I could be funny.
It's great to have a challenge and show people something they didn't expect," she
said.
"I think there's an interest now in the sexuality of older women," Seymour
said. "We baby boomers, we don't want to go sit by the fireside, knit
and wait for our time with the Grim Reaper. We're still out partying and having
a good time
