Maria Johnson, Staff Writer
She made her name as a medicine woman.
Soon she’ll come to Greensboro with a prescription
for parents of all ages.
"The message you have is just because you don’t
give birth to a child biologically doesn’t mean there
isn’t a child you couldn’t influence enormously," actor
Jane Seymour says.
Seymour, best known for her role as Dr. Michaela Quinn in
the 1990s television series "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," will
speak next week at a fund-raiser for the Children’s
Home Society of North Carolina.
The event also will launch the 75th year of the Little Red
Stocking Campaign, a fund-raiser for the nonprofit organization
that pairs children with adoptive families and foster parents.
The group asked Seymour, the mother of six, to speak because
of her charity work. She has been involved with UNICEF, the
Make-a-Wish Foundation, the American Red Cross and City Hearts,
an organization that teaches performing arts to inner-city
children.
Seymour, whose given name is Joyce Frankenburg, faced her
own challenges as a child growing up in London. She was a
mediocre student with flat feet and a speech impediment.
She took ballet classes to correct the flat feet. Speech
classes made her fall in love with theater. She enrolled
in an art school.
"I would probably have been an outcast if I stayed
at a regular school. I wouldn’t have got more than
probably a C-minus, a C maybe," Seymour told an audience
in Los Angeles last year. "Once I went to this art school,
I was empowered."
She worked for many years in British film, theater and radio.
She appeared in the 1973 James Bond movie "Live and
Let Die." Later, Seymour did American television and
movies. She starred in the 1980 movie "Somewhere in
Time" with Christopher Reeve.
She also earned the nickname "Queen of the Miniseries" for
her work on projects including "Captains and Kings," "East
of Eden" and "War and Remembrance."
Seymour, 53, continues her acting career. She’ll appear
in five upcoming episodes of "Smallville," a WB
show about the teenage Superman. Next summer, she’ll
appear in a film called "The Wedding Crasher" with
Owen Wilson and Christopher Walken.
Outside of acting, she has designed housewares and children’s
clothing, and she has written several children’s books,
drawing on her experience as the biological mother of four
children and stepmother of two.
"They’re not mine by birth, but they are mine
in terms of my desire to love them and raise them," Seymour
says of her stepchildren. She urges other people to find
room in their hearts for children who are not theirs biologically.
"Everybody can do something to some degree," she
says.
Contact Maria Johnson at 373-7009 or mjohnson@news-record.com.
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