But a new man arrived on the scene -- her husband's best friend Geoffrey ‘Geep' Planer then a 28-year-old management consultant who she called the most brilliant and original man she'd ever met
He was the one who persuaded her to go West. She had received good reviews in America for ‘King David' a TV film she had made in Britain for the U.S. market. She wasn't shy and at the age of 26 revealed a certain personality:
‘The Americans thought I was unique, that there were no other actresses quite like me.
‘I suddenly realised that in England I wasn't ordinary enough to do television. They seemed to like the girl-next-door types.
‘And anyway all the big starring roles were being cast in America.England had a limited idea of what I could do. I was typecast in television classics.
‘I'm actually a terrific comedienne but nobody's cast me in movies as that yet. I'm very good at it. On stage it's the best thing I've ever done.
I'm at my best playing gawky, ugly, secretary-type birds.
‘Anyway Geep gave me a hundred pounds just to persuade me to leave Britain, literally put my knapsack on my back and said bye-bye, see you soon. I was incredibly lonely and miserable that first month.
‘I didn't know anybody except Olivia Newton-John's sister Rhona who's out here trying to make a new life as an actress and songwriter. Then I got an agent and the work started coming in.
‘Geep was very brave to packed me off like that, putting me in the situation where I was a single girl again, free to go out and meet people after being with him for three and half years.
‘But it's worked. I haven't met anybody else I'd rather be with -- despite newspaper gossip having me dating Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski, Elliott Could and goodness knows who else'.
Goodness, as Mae West observed, has nothing to do with it when Mr Beatty is involved. Jane Seymour says he used to call her at 3am in the morning. But she says she beat him and the rest of the Tinseltown amorous pack off by telling them her boyfriend was on the next ‘plane from London .
At the time she thought that she an Geep Planer might marry but only to have children. ‘Oh, yes I'd love to have children. I think I'd be a better actress too if I were a mother.
‘God, doesn't that sound like an ambitious bitch talking!'.
They did marry. It lasted a year.
Today she says they remain good friends.
She does talk marital denial:' As far as I'm concerned I've only been married once before. The others don't count as marriages. I was far too young to make these decisions and I had no idea my success would be hard for someone else.
To defend her serial marrying she offers the Elizabeth Taylor mantra:' I was brought up the old fashioned way. You don't get involved with someone before you're married. No sex before marriage, right?'
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