Jane Seymour blasts cosmetic surgery


Hollywood actresses are "destroying" their faces with cosmetic surgery and Botox, British beauty Jane Seymour says.

The 54-year-old star, who strips naked in the new hit comedy Wedding Crashers, believes too much dieting and exercise also leaves actresses sickly, skinny and their faces gaunt.

"When I see people on television and nothing is moving and their eyebrows are up near the corner of their head I think 'How can they do this? They're destroying their expression'," Seymour, a mother of six, told AAP during a recent interview in Beverly Hills.

Seymour, who was wearing tight-fitting designer jeans and a revealing Karen Millen halter neck top, admits to some minor cosmetic touch ups.

However, she refuses to follow some of Hollywood's best known leading ladies and have Botox injected to smooth out the lines in her forehead or go under a surgeons knife for a face lift.

"I haven't done all that plastic surgery thing," Seymour said.

"I think most women in the industry my age don't look like themselves anymore.

"I've had some things done to my eyes because I had some mole things and genetically we've all had bags under our eyes in my family, so we removed the bags, but that's it."

There are times when Seymour, a Bond girl in 1973's Live and Let Die, and star of the popular 1990's television series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, is not happy when she looks into the mirror.

Actresses, however, should leave their faces intact, she believes.

"There are days when I go 'Ohhhh'," Seymour sighs.

"Actually, the Botox thing I think is just a huge mistake for an actress. If you are a dramatic actress or even comedic, you need all those frown lines."

Seymour shivers when she recalls a movie her husband James Keach directed and she starred in.

An actress, who Seymour declines to name, was unable to produce the performance she and Keach needed because the actress had had Botox.

"She's a great actress, but she had Botoxed herself and nothing moved," Seymour recalled.

"We did 10 takes. I said to my husband who was directing the movie 'Forget it. It's impossible for her to move her face'.

"I think that's a terrible mistake."

Seymour, despite being in her mid-50s, refuses to shy away from sexy roles, even if it means stripping off in front of Hollywood playboy Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers.

She plays Kathleen 'Kitty Cat' Cleary, the temptress wife of a powerful American politician portrayed by Christopher Walken.

"Someone asked me the other day did I have a body double and I said 'Hell no'. Anyone crazy enough to ask me at 54 to show my body deserves it," Seymour laughed.

"And I would never have got the same reaction out of Owen. He was terrified.

"He was totally terrified.

"I said: Owen trust me. I'm a professional."

The key to keeping her looks, Seymour says, probably has to do with being a non-smoker and refusing to be obsessed with diets and exercise.

"I think a lot of people over exercise and then they get gaunt and I think a lot of women get too thin and it doesn't look good on your face," she said.

The English actress travels the world delivering motivational speeches to women.

A few nights earlier she addressed 2,000 women in Milwaukee about turning life's challenges into opportunities.

That is how Seymour has lived her own life.

"It's about living in the moment," she says.

"It's about the security of knowing.

"I know as an actress I've been given lots and lots of opportunities. I've already done lots of different challenges but I'm open to new ones.

"I'm not afraid of failure because the only failure is not trying."

Wedding Crashers opens in Australia on August 11.

Copyright © 2005 AAP