Jane Seymour didn’t realise she has the same name as Henry VIII’s third wife.
Jane Seymour didn’t realise the significance of her name
The 73-year-old actress – whose birth name is Joyce Frankenberg – has revealed that she adopted the name without realising that it was the same as the former Queen of England, who died in the 16th century.
Jane said on ‘Getting Grilled with Curtis Stone’: “My agent said, ‘Your name is too long, too foreign, and too difficult to spell, so we want something English.’ So I kept the initial J, and I thought plain ‘Jane.’ … Then somebody came up with the idea of ‘Seymour,’ and it sounded very English. Easy to remember.
“It took us a little moment or two [to realise] that it was actually Henry VIII’s middle wife, the one that no one ever spoke about, until they started making all these movies about Henry the VIII!”
Jane observed that some of Henry’s other wives are better known.
She said: “I would never have done it. But then, you know, if I was going to call myself Catherine of Aragon … No, I would never have done that or Anne Boleyn. But Jane Seymour … No one had ever heard of Jane Seymour.”
Meanwhile, Jane previously revealed that she’s determined to fight ‘unseenism’.
The actress believes that the social phenomenon – which devalues women in society as they age – is a “real, really large issue in the medical world” and she’s determined to fight back against it.
Jane told PEOPLE: “A lot of women, sort of [age] 50 on, just kind of hide away and expect not to be listened to or heard.
“It’s a real, really large issue in the medical world because you have to empower women to actually stand up for their rights.”
