Actress Jane Seymour is opening up about her four divorces over the years. Now, at 69, she is single and sharing some “painful” lessons she learned from her failed unions. First, let’s take a look back at her four marriages.
Her first husband was Michael Attenborough, son of actor Richard Attenborough. They were married from 1971 to 1973. Her next marriage was also short. In 1977, she married Geoffrey Planer and their marriage lasted just one year.
Jane Seymour talks about her four divorces
In 1981, she married again, this time to David Flynn. They had two children together, Sean and Katherine. Their marriage ended in 1992. Just a year later, she married James Keach. They had twins, John and Kristopher. It seemed that their marriage might be the one to last, but eventually, it ended in 2015.
RELATED: Jane Seymour: 50 Years of Her Inspiring Life from 1970 to 2020
Jane admitted that it was always her husband who ended the marriage. She said, “I’ve always done the best I could; I took my kids all over the world whenever I was working, I had them on-set with me. And I somehow managed to juggle it. I was married to men who had different issues, and I never ended the marriages — they did, by finding other people!”
The overall lesson she learned was “to let go. To try to find a way to communicate and keep what was good in the relationship. Especially when co-parenting. And I tried to look at my side of things: ‘What could I have done differently?’ But it’s hard when you’re a mother and you work. It means sometimes you’re gone. And sometimes you may be in a relationship where they would rather that you were there 24/7 and never worked.”
She said of her challenges, “The sooner you can accept it, the better for you and others. And then when you look out from yourself and look around to see what other people are suffering or challenged by, you realize what you have is minimal compared to other people’s challenges. And so for me, I was really brought up to see what I could do for others, because that would give me a sense of purpose. When I had a sense of purpose, I was able then to deal with what I had to deal with.”