(piano intro) Hello, I'm Nido Qubein and welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today is a famous actress, an artist, and a humanitarian.

She's inspired audiences around the globe.

With award winning roles on screen and meaningful work off camera.

She leads with heart, and purpose, and passion.

Today, we'll meet Jane Seymour.

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Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with the Bud Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

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- You were a dancer among other things.

How did you learn to be an actress?

Did you go to school for it?

Did you wake up one day and say, "I would just love to be an actor"?

- I had no intention to being an actress at all, no.

I was, when I was very young, my parents were told that I had to have remedial work because I had flat feet and a speech impediment.

So the speech impediment was, I would say, a while on rugged walks to rugged war schools, I couldn't roll my R's.

So I had to (growls) do that all morning.

And then they put me in ballet school and I fell madly in love with ballet.

I just went, "That's it."

But of course I had flat feet.

So I had everything wrong with me, but the two things that I ended up succeeding in.

So I ended up dancing with the Kirov Ballet, who was the major Russian ballet company at the time, at Covent Garden when I was, I think, 16.

And then I came to America when I was 26 and they said, "If you can lose your English accent "and fool us Americans that you're American, "you'll never stop working," which is exactly what I did.

So two challenges turned into the two things I'm most known for today.

- Amazing.

From adversity to abundance.

And then you received the Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

- Yeah, that was fantastic.

What's more, she personally gave it to me.

Very few people actually would have her.

Yes, people in America don't really understand.

It's the Order of the Knighthood, the whole thing.

So you have, I think, MBE, member, what I am, Officer of the British Empire, then it goes up and then you're Commander and then you become a Knight, or a Dame if you're a woman.

So I'm a kind of pre-Dame.

And it's a huge honor and I was just thrilled to receive it, especially since I'd already moved to America.

I thought that it wouldn't happen.

- Mm-hmm, many people know you because you started in Dr.

Quinn.

You were Dr.

Michaela Quinn, right?

- Michaela Quinn, yes.

- Michaela Quinn.

And everybody knows you for that.

Was that your very first big deal?

- Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I starred in a James Bond film when I was 20.

And before that, playing Solitaire in Live and Let Die, before that I starred in an English television show called The Oneidon Line.

So directly from that, I was picked to do the Bond film.

And then after that, I never stopped working.

I did a lot of theater work.

I went back into the theater because I really wanted to fine tune my ability to act.

And I studied dancing.

You asked if I went to college or anything.

I went to a specific school called the Arts Educational where the curriculum, if you were a ballet student, was ballet, but you had to do character, mime, drama, singing, design, history of ballet, history of theater.

It was a huge curriculum that you had whether you liked it or not.

And so when I injured myself as a dancer and became an actress by default, I already had the discipline and the training of dance and also the training in drama because they gave that to you anyway.

- How did you get your very first call, very first assignment?

- So I was 13 years old.

- 13?

- 13.

And I was at school and my parents could barely afford it.

And I was selected to sing for an American chef boy at a COD commercial with a bunch of other kids.

And we all had to sing in American.

(laughs) - American accent.

- Yes, yes.

And so that was that.

And then the first proper thing really, I was 15, I was in a pantomime, which is a Christmas show in England.

I had one line and they let me be understudy for the leading lady, 15.

And then by the time I was 17, I was a chorus girl in Richard Attenborough's first movie, "Oh, What a Lovely War" with Maggie Smith.

And I was in the chorus, I had one line, singing and dancing, and she took me aside one day and she said, "You stick out."

And I thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm not on time with all."

I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm trying really hard."

She said, "No, no, you stick out.

"You're not going to be in the chorus for very long."

And that was it.

I literally, days after that, got spotted by the top agent in England who offered to represent me.

And psst.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- So in the years that you've been in the acting world, how has that changed?

Tell us something that we don't know about that world.

Did it begin by someone discovering you?

And today it's very different, better, worse.

What about the acting sector that has changed over these years?

Besides, of course, technology and the new ways of doing films.

- Well, I would say that there was a very distinct, you either were a theater actor, a vocal actor on radio, or you were television, or you were film.

You definitely didn't do all of the above.

- I see.

- And I broke that ceiling.

When I did, I was in "Amadeus" on Broadway in the original cast with Ian McKellen and Tim Curry.

I had a film with Christopher Reeve come out called "Somewhere in Time," a feature film, and a series, a miniseries on television called "Of East of Eden."

And all three came out in the same week.

- Really?

- And that was unheard of.

Nobody did all three.

So I've always been breaking the rules a bit.

But nowadays, you'll see that because of Netflix and all the streaming channels, you'll see Helen Mirren, and you'll see all the greatest movie actors and theater actors now doing long-form television, as I call it.

Because it's really changed now.

Most people are watching streaming.

That's where they'll watch even major films.

They won't necessarily watch them in the theater, which is sad.

- And sometimes paying for it.

- Oh, yes.

- I don't mean just subscription, but per film.

- Yes.

Well, I mean, the whole experience of going to a cinema to watch a movie, now those movies generally are the big action movies, the huge things, or things where you take your kids to.

But most people are watching long-form.

- At home.

- At home.

So even a series, for example, "Dr.

Quinn" was 22 hours long, 22 one-hour shows per season.

Now I'm doing "Harry Wilde," that is six one-hours, or maybe eight one-hours a season.

So it's changed.

And people do what they call binge-watching.

They'll watch six or eight of them.

The good news is-- - Back to back.

- Back to back.

But the good news is that whereas in television, regular television, you had to accommodate the fact that they were going to sell soap or food or something, there was gonna be a commercial in the middle of it.

So it takes you right out of the drama or the comedy.

You had to stop, and now you can actually tell the story as you would in a major motion picture with the quality of a major motion picture.

And it's on people's screens.

They can watch them.

- You've done so much across so many sectors, or so many areas in the arts.

And you've done it for many years.

I know that you flew in from Ireland yesterday to be with us for this show, and then you're going back to Ireland.

And you're the mother of four.

- Yes.

- How did you do all this?

- Very good question.

I think I was completely insane.

After that time I told you where I had a theater and film and the rest of it.

I actually got fired after about eight months because I was pregnant.

I was fired from the play.

So that was a big awakening.

I didn't know that happened.

I had my first child, Katie.

When she was three months old, I went to make a movie in Hungary, which was then, it was only one flight a week, and I had to take her with me.

And I packed all the things that we would have in America, formula and diapers and everything, and everything crashed at the airport.

And I had to just grab a baby and go and hope and believe that in Hungary children survived to adulthood, which clearly they did.

And so I took my kids with me basically wherever I was filming.

They've been all over the world.

And then they ended up in the movies.

So when I played Marie Antoinette in "The French Revolution," in two languages, by the way, they noticed that my children exactly resembled the actual children, Marie Antoinette's children, and were the right age.

So they asked, "Could they have them act?"

They weren't actors.

So there I was with them acting.

They've acted in a few things.

And so they kind of grew up on sets, and they grew up with me, and they knew exactly what I did.

And that was normal to them.

They didn't know anything else.

- You did Marie Antoinette in two languages.

- Yes.

- You spoke the two languages?

- My agent never told me it was going to be in French.

It wasn't until I arrived and they started speaking to me rapidly in French, and I was trying to keep up with the French I'd learned at school, that they looked at one another and said, "Don't you know you're doing this in French?"

And I went, "No, but I can do it.

"We'll start in a week, I'll be fine."

And so that's why I now speak fluent French.

- I see.

- I told myself I will not speak or even think in English until I finish this movie.

And so for six months, I only spoke French.

And of course, mostly I only had to learn the lines in French.

But I now speak, apparently, pretty good fluent French.

- It seems to be very difficult to do.

- It was.

I mean, I've had to, for movies, I've had to overnight learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Hebrew, Yiddish, German.

I'm trying to think all kinds of different languages.

But my mother was from Holland, so I think when you have languages in your household, you hear it.

- You develop an ear for it.

- I just think that learning languages is probably one of the most important things that any of us can do.

At least one other language.

It just breaks the barrier.

- This reminds me of David Foster, whom you know.

- Yes.

- The way Josh Groban really became well-known is that David called them to come in and to be a stand-in for another singer, I'm not sure who it was, and to sing, I'm not sure what the song was, the famous song that Celine Dion does.

And he did this thing with Celine Dion in a different language.

And he had to learn it in three, four hours and master it.

And he tells the story about the art of the possible, and that's what your life has been.

You believe in the art of the possible.

Nothing kept you back.

In spite of it, you moved onward and upward.

- My daughter, I asked her, she's 43 and graduated from Columbia University, and I told her I was coming to do this.

And I said, "Who am I to your generation "or a younger generation?"

And she said, "Mom, you're my inspiration."

I thought, well, that's good, because normally it's like, "Mom, why are you doing that?

"You don't understand, it's different these days."

Usually.

And she said, "You're a yes person."

I said, "What does that mean?"

She said, "Well, someone asks you to do something, "you go yes, and then you figure out how to do it."

And she also said, "And when they knock you down, "as far down as you can go, you're resilient.

"You brush yourself off, you don't blame anyone or anything.

"You're in the moment and you're already onto the next."

And I just thought, that is really wise advice for anyone.

And I didn't realize that that is what I do.

And then I asked my partner, I said, "Who am I and what do I do?"

And he said, "Some people have ideas "and talk about them forever and never do them."

He said, "You have an idea at breakfast, "and you've actually accomplished it by dinner.

"I mean, it's actually happening."

He said, "I have never seen anyone come up with an idea, "act on it, and complete."

And so, I just realized that I-- - Where did that come from for you?

Is it your mom, your dad, is your environment?

How did you develop that spirit?

- I think my father was a doctor, and we didn't have very much money, but he would read to us, take us around London, take us to museums, we would travel in the back of a car and look at things and learn about things.

And I think he really taught us that there were no barriers.

We had, it was three girls, so it wasn't like boys can do this and girls can't.

It was like, you three can be whatever you want to be.

And also, there was a scientific society he belonged to, and so we would go every week to these lectures, and then once a year, there would be an exhibit, an exhibition, and we would do a family subject.

We'd do water or fire or, I can't remember what else, we did medicine or something.

And I would do one aspect, usually, sort of, I don't know, the advertising of it.

My sisters, for some reason, would do the chemistry, and my father would do the medical.

But anyway, we learned how to present ourselves and how to present a project from the time we were tiny.

And I think that's where it comes from.

We were never afraid to get up and just say, well, this is how it works, and this is what happened then.

(laughs) - And I can make it happen.

- Yeah, I can make it happen.

- So, Jane, first of all, this is perhaps a personal question, I don't know, but is Jane Seymour your born name, or is that an acting name?

- So, back in the days, in the old days, when I was born, where the dinosaurs roamed, actresses and actors never kept their own names.

They were all, they had what was called a stage name.

And my agent said to me that my name was too long, too foreign, and too difficult to spell.

My real name is Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg.

- That is difficult.

- Yeah, so, and plus we weren't German, and we just had a war with Germany.

So he said, we need an English name that's easy to remember, easy to spell.

And somebody came, I thought I'll keep the initial J, so Jane, I thought anyone could be a Jane.

Not everyone could be a Beatrice or a Sophie or a Priscilla, I felt, but Jane was plain.

You know, anybody could hang onto that.

And then someone said Seymour, and I thought, well, that's very English, it's easy to remember.

Why is it easy to remember?

And then I went, oh, it's Henry VIII's middle wife, the one that nobody ever remembers.

Until they started making all these movies and television shows about Henry VIII.

So before that, I just, people went, oh yes, haven't I met you at a party?

Or maybe I've seen your work.

It worked fantastically for me.

But I always published my real name.

You know, I never pretended to be Seymour.

You have to tell us that all this time that you've done all these things and you've kept yourself in perfect shape, what is your secret?

- Well, I think because I did ballet from a very early age, I learnt deportment, I learnt core strength, I learnt, I understand how the body works from dance and all of that.

And I think, I just, I happen to like healthy food.

I happen to love a Mediterranean diet, which now, oh my goodness, the healthiest thing is a Mediterranean diet.

I've been eating a Mediterranean diet since I was born.

I love healthy, organic food.

I grow my own.

And so I never go on an actual diet, but I will tend to prefer to eat mostly vegetables and fish.

So that's it.

And if I want chocolate, I have some, I just don't eat the whole bar.

- You're in Ireland now doing what?

- I'm doing a six part, six hour hallmark movie for Christmas.

And May Whitman is the star and I'm playing one of the major characters in it.

And it's really delightful.

It's really wonderful.

At the moment, it's called "The 12 Dates of Christmas," but I think the title might change, but it'll come out just before Christmas.

- And why is it in Ireland?

- Because in Ireland, I hate to say it, but Hollywood is very quiet these days.

And a lot of projects that would be taking place in California or in America are now being shot in Ireland.

- Is it less expensive?

Is it?

- They have very good tax, you know, whatever system there.

So it cuts enormous amount of your funding.

You have incredible crews.

You have amazing talent.

It's a beautiful place to shoot.

Dublin, where I'm shooting, could easily be, you know, back in the day anywhere.

I mean, they did, what did they do?

"Lord of the Rings."

They do everything there.

I mean, it could be London.

It could be anywhere.

And my show, "Harry Wilde," which I also shoot there, we chose to actually set it in Ireland, which is very unheard of.

Most of the films that are being shot in Ireland are supposed to be somewhere else.

And what I'm doing right now is London.

So they'll shoot in London a little bit for the exteriors, and then they'll shoot everything else in and around Dublin.

- When we watch one of these movies, how much of it is real?

How much of it is concocted through technology?

- Oh, ours is all real.

Ours is 100% real.

Except that we're shooting "Christmas" right now.

So I was shooting a sequence where they had a drone shot, and it was full of this beautiful yellow broom everywhere.

And I said, "How are you going to shoot that for Christmas?"

And they said, "Oh, we'll just desaturate it, and it'll look like snow."

And I went, "Oh, brilliant."

So we have fake snow everywhere.

And, but other than that, no, there's, I don't think we have too much.

They have a little bit of special effects in it, in this particular one, because there's sort of a whole thing about patterns, seeing patterns around somebody.

So that will be a special effect.

But everything else is very real.

- If a young person want to be in the acting world comes to you and says, "What's your best advice?"

- I would say, if you have to have a passion for it, and you have to be prepared to fail, or to be turned down, you have to be pretty resilient to keep going.

I would absolutely say, study, study, study, study English, watch movies and television and theater, and see how it's done by the best.

And I think really to get ahead these days, you have to create your own material.

And of course, nowadays you don't audition the way you used to in the old days.

You don't go somewhere and somebody hears you perform.

No, you have to do it, you selfie it on a cell phone.

So you set up your cell phones.

You actually have to be the director as well, and the lighting camera person.

So you set it up, you do the scene, you send that out, and then they'll look at countless ones of those, and they'll decide from that, whether or not they want to see you again.

And they don't actually even meet you.

They might meet you on Zoom.

- Talk to you on Zoom.

- Yes.

So really, you are going to present yourself as what they need.

You have to decide when you do an audition, that you are solving their problem.

They no longer have to look for someone else.

You are exactly what they need.

So you don't come in with apologies.

If you're playing a character that would dress a certain way, or look a certain way, that is what you show them.

Don't even think for one second they have any imagination in that.

So I have wigs, and clothes, and costumes, and I always kind of put the character together if I were to do that.

- Fascinating, all fascinating.

It's terrific talking with you, and thank you for being with me on Side by Side.

- Thank you.

- Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors locally from 13 facilities and 4,500 hardworking teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- The Bud Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with the Bud Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

Truist, leaders in banking, unwavering in care.