LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - "I never guest star," Jane Seymour notes.

It's true. In fact, since Seymour's CBS drama "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" went off the air in 1998, the one-time Queen of the TV Movie has been harder and harder to find on your television dial. Sure, there have been a handful of telefilms, including two "Dr. Quinn" movies, but when did anybody last have a Jane Seymour sighting?

Apparently, it depends on where you've been looking. Seymour may not have been acting, but she hasn't been on hiatus. She's been showing her paintings around the country, raising a family, creating home furnishings for Saks Incorporated, developing behind-the-camera projects with husband James Keach and designing ballet sets and women's and children's clothing lines. When Seymour says that she's "an actress by default," it's easy to see where her priorities lie.

"I hadn't actually gone out and done any acting in a year and a half, so I though it'd be fun to get back in the saddle again, as it were, but to do something completely different from Dr. Quinn and completely different from what people are used to seeing me do," Seymour says.

The Emmy-winning actress (for 1988's "Onassis: The Richest Man in the World") and former Bond Girl (opposite Roger Moore in "Live and Let Die") was lured back in front of the camera by what she describes as a "particularly tricky scene" at the episode's end. Fortunately, she was already a fan of the three-headed Dick Wolf franchise.

"If you look at the television schedules, you'll see that unless it's a reality show, it all seems to be about 'Law & Order' of some sort," Seymour laughs.

After years as the focus on her own show and starring in lengthy miniseries and original movies, Seymour enjoyed the different pace of making a guest appearance and envied the stars of "Special Victims Unit."

"There are so many different people in it that they don't have the grind that I had," she says, remembering her days as a medicine woman. "I was in every single scene -- I would have one page off per episode most of the time. I looked at these people and thought this is a pretty cushy job compared to what I did and that if I did do a series again, this would be the way to do it, to be part of an ensemble."

While the appearance reminded Seymour of the pleasures of television acting, she doesn't want to rush back into series television until the project is right. She's planning to star in a Court TV movie in the next year and will work in a production capacity on director James Mangold's upcoming Johnny Cash biopic, but she's content with her other work.

"I'm an artist and I don't want to sit around waiting for somebody to say 'Well, we think we might like you to do this,'" She says. "[T]he beauty of painting and sculpting is that I can have an idea and do it and express myself and it's uniquely mine and I don't have to wait to be hired."

Seymour's episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" airs Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 10 p.m. ET.