(Photo: Getty Images)
Jane Seymour returns this week in Harry Wild, a new Irish mystery thriller series launching today (April 4) on Acorn TV. She plays Harriet "Harry" Wild, a retired university professor who moves in with her police detective son, Charlie (Kevin Ryan). Once there, she finds that her in-depth knowledge of English Literature could help him crack his latest case.

It's yet another interesting role for this prolific actress who made her screen debut with an uncredited appearance as a chorus girl in the classic 1969 movie Oh! What a Lovely War. Since then, she has been credited with various TV and movie projects, so we're celebrating her enduring career by making her our British Icon of the Week.
Here are 10 things we admire and appreciate about Jane Seymour.
1. She starred in the much-loved '90s drama series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Seymour won a Golden Globe award for her portrayal of Dr. Michaela Quinn, a wealthy physician who relocates from Boston to Colorado Springs to set up her own practice. The show eventually ran for six seasons and two TV movies, but Seymour recently told The Guardian that it wasn't expected to make it beyond a pilot episode.
"It’ll never be a series," Seymour says she was told after landing the title role. "It's a woman in the lead: that doesn't work. It's a western, a period piece, and it's women and children and animals, and morality."
2. She credits the show with "saving my life."
Seymour was in dire straits at the time because of a financially ruinous marriage. "I was homeless, penniless and I called my agent and said I would do anything," she told Entertainment Tonight. "He called the networks, and they said, how about a little movie of the week? But she has to sign for five years in case it becomes a series, she has to start tomorrow morning – less than 12 hours from now – and that was it."
Explaining how this steady job turned things around for her, Seymour added: "I got a roof over my head, I got some money so I could get back on my feet, and my kids could come out to the set and do their schoolwork in the trailer and they wrote the most beautiful material ever."
3. She appeared in the 1973 Bond movie Live and Let Die but is realistic about how badly it has aged.
Seymour played "Bond girl" Solitaire, a psychic medium who served as 007's love interest, opposite Roger Moore. At the time, Moore was 46 and Seymour was 22.
“You’d never make that movie now," Seymour told The Guardian recently. "You wouldn’t want to make that movie. I was a woman, a virgin, who ran three paces behind a man with a gun, wearing very… well, actually for a Bond girl, a lot. I was deflowered and then deposited. I'd lost all my power, so I was useless. It was awful!"
4. She's an Emmy Award winner.

Seymour won her Emmy for portraying legendary opera singer Maria Callas in the 1988 TV movie Onassis: The Richest Man in the World. Seymour also has a further four Emmy nominations, two of which came for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
5. She is proud to have become a naturalized American citizen in 2005.
Seymour now holds dual British and American citizenship. "I've realized that I've been living here longer than in my home country. America has given me unbelievable opportunities," Seymour told USA Today in 2005, shortly after her citizenship ceremony. "I realized that with the U.S. elections [coming], I wanted to vote and I couldn't. I felt the time had come to participate more fully."
6. In 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Seymour has since been honest about wanting to receive a Damehood, too, telling The Times: "Yes, well, that would be nice. I'm an OBE. Maybe they don't feel I’ve earned it yet. There's not much more I can do."
7. She is an accomplished painter.

You can check out a selection of her works on the Wentworth Gallery website.
8. She is also proud to have posed for Playboy magazine in 2018, at the age of 67.
This marked the third time that Seymour had appeared in the magazine. Discussing why she agreed to the shoot, Seymour told You: "I had the opportunity to be shot by one of the best photographers around. I thought maybe I could empower other women to feel that just because you’ve turned 40, it doesn’t mean you don’t exist anymore. And since I didn’t even need to take my clothes off, I just thought: 'Why not?'"
9. She attributes her recent career revival, in part, to her decision not to undergo cosmetic surgery.
In addition to Harry Wild, Seymour has a recurring role in the CBS sitcom B Positive, and a movie called Ruby's Choice coming out later this year. "I have wrinkles. I mean, I actually smile and I can frown, and I can get angry," she said on the TODAY show last week. "I can play an 85-year-old in a retirement home in B Positive, called Bette, who thinks she’s a 20-year-old rock chick. So I, literally, am playing all the characters I’ve always wanted to play."

10. And finally, she was absolutely hilarious in Wedding Crashers.

Who can forget Seymour's performance as Kathleen Cleary, the more-than-slightly flirtatious mother-in-law of Owen Wilson's character? It's a classic.
Do you have a favorite Jane Seymour role?