Taking a dip in her pool, Jane Seymour looks sensational in a swimsuit at 72 as HELLO! joins her for an exclusive shoot at her oceanfront Malibu mansion.
In a world terrified of ageing, post menopause and menopause, the actress defiantly reveals how she has embraced all the changes that have been thrown at her with a positive outlook.
Plus, being in her seventies has brought Jane great happiness too. "I feel an extraordinary freedom at the moment, I really do," she tells HELLO! of her life now.
Jane Seymour's children
Jane lives life to the fullest: she's a Hollywood actress, a leading lady in TV and she's also a grandmother and a mother to her four beloved children - Katherine, 41, Sean, 38, and twins John and Kristopher, 27.
She reflects: "All the kids have now left home and taken off and it's my time for me and there's no point talking about next year or the year after because I don't know about tomorrow. So now I live very much in the moment. If someone says, 'Do you want to?' I say, 'Yes.' And I say, 'Let's do it now.' Not tomorrow."
Experience with menopause
October marks Menopause Awareness Month and, remembering her own experiences, Jane opens up about how menopause impacted her sexuality.
She says: "Sex gets painful and then you just have to find ways to deal with that. I think for me that Estring was brilliant because that definitely gave me estrogen where I needed it. So that was a game changer for me. There is medication that can help and like everything in life, you find a different way of dealing with things. You find a way that works for you or you and your partner in whatever fashion and there are lots of different ways to find pleasure in life. And to be a whole woman."
Jane champions estrogen for being empowering, saying: "My doctor Dr. Sherry Ross said at any age for a woman, estrogen is your superpower. And if you think about estrogen as your superpower, then you look at the whole thing differently."
Reflecting on her own experiences of menopause with her doctor, Jane remembers powering through it. "I made sure with my doctor that I got it accurate," she says. "I hit menopause between the ages of 50 and 51 which is perfectly normal and because I didn't have a family history of breast cancer, I was put on HRT.
"She really feels that I succeeded in menopause because she says when you have menopause, everyone has what they call disruptive symptoms: sleep, brain fog, sweating, a red face and being forgetful. But she said that, what I did is I just didn't have time for any of that because my career had suddenly taken off.
"I had two small children, five-year-old twins to deal with and a lot of business as well. And I was just pushing right through on all of it. So, that's what I did. And she feels that my attitude towards that part of my life had as much to do with the success I had of getting through it as did the medications that I was given."
Her views on getting older
The actress hopes to take away the stigma that comes with menopause and getting older.
"The world is against aging. We hate aging. We look at aging and we go, 'Oh, no, there's a wrinkle, oh my God. Get rid of it. Grey hair. No. Terrifying!' Whereas you can look at it the other way and you can say actually, I now have time in my life to do things I really want to do. Maybe I can now become the person I want to be."
She adds: "Menopause is a taboo subject, no one wants to talk about aging, especially women because they're doing everything they can to look 20 or 30 years younger. So the last thing they want to do is to talk about that and there's always been this whole thing that when you turn 50, you're not having babies anymore, so now you're kind of useless. You're on the fence, you're done."
Looking up to her mother
Jane followed in the footsteps of her late mum Mieke Frankenberg who always inspired her. She says: "I learned a lot from my mother about surviving, about accepting, about moving forward. She didn't let being in the camps for three and a half years stop her from having a vibrant fabulous life, so menopause was not such a big deal for her."
The advice she will give her daughter is the same she is sharing with women everywhere. "Go to your doctor, find out what your family history is, know how you are going to deal with your superpower. How are you going to manage your estrogen? I would just put it bluntly like that and say: 'Hey, all of this is normal.' It's nothing to be ashamed of. Have a sense of humour about it and push through, don't tell yourself you can't do things because of it. Tell yourself you can and you will and you do and give yourself a pat on the back when you manage it."
Her partner John Zambetti
Having found romance again after four marriages that didn't work out, Jane is in the throes of love with singer/songwriter John Zambetti. The actress only recently went Instagram official with her new beau, who plays with The Malibooz band, sharing a photo of the couple canoodling and kissing at an alfresco sunset dinner. "I've never been happier," she wrote.
Revealing their close bond, Jane shares the compliments he gives her and says he loves "that I'm positive, that I don't hold on to resentments, that I process things that a lot of people get stuck with for the rest of their lives and I accept and change and I'm not afraid to try something new".
© InstagramView on cosmetic treatments
Aging gracefully in the spotlight, Jane looks incredible and the actress shares some of her Hollywood secrets to her youthful appearance. "I'm a temporary enhancement person, rather than a permanent enhancement person. If I need eyelashes, I stick them on. If I need more hair, I clip some in," she says.
"I know that the privilege of being in the spotlight is they put light on you in the right direction. So I know that if someone wants a photograph of me and there's a top light and it's in an office that I will look like death.
"Because I'm an actress, I am sometimes required to play roles much younger than me and then in the same show very much older than I am, so I keep my face mobile. That's why I don't do the things a lot of people are doing because I'm a blank canvas. I'm an actress. I want to be able to play every emotion there is because it would be like having a string instrument and taking a few of the strings off or numbing them."
Exercise routine
Staying in shape is important too and Jane always fits it into her gruelling schedules. For instance, she would be exercising while learning lines for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
"I'm not one of those obsessive exercise people." She adds: "I used to be a dancer so my body remembers its muscle tone, it comes back pretty quickly if I do some stretches and some of the basic bar moves that I used to do when I was a ballet dancer."
Mediterranean diet
Plus, Jane has eight hours sleep every night, eats a healthy Mediterranean diet and she fasts. She says: "I do intermittent fasting, unless I have to work very early in the morning on a film and I feel I need the extra energy. I generally give my body 16 hours minimum to recoup. I think it works brilliantly. I've seen it work for me but I'm not religious about it. If I'm going out for a glorious dinner, everything gets thrown out the window," she says.
Jane is a total joy and radiant, bursting with positivity for life, saying: "I'm just so happy to be alive and I feel gratitude, I feel gratitude for being safe and pretty healthy. I feel gratitude for having great relationships with my children, my family, my close friends and even my school friends."
For more information on menopause, click here.
Photographer: Jonas Mohr
Stylist: Rafael Linares @ Art Department
Hair: Paul Norton
Makeup: Marina Gravani
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