When Jane Seymour arrived on the set of Live and Let Die, director Guy Hamilton glanced at the 21-year-old actor, dressed in her Bond girl costume, and declared: “What the hell do you look like?” The costumes—made in triplicate for Seymour—wouldn’t cut it. “We liked you. You looked better at the party last night,” Hamilton continued. “Where’s your suitcase?”
But Seymour only had minimal clothing with her. The solution? “They actually copied my own clothes for the Bond film!”
The Sun Also Rises, 1984©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Sun Also Rises, 1984©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
Ever since Live and Let Die, Seymour has ensured that her closet would never be empty again. “I then got in my contract that I could keep all the clothes,” she says. Today, her Malibu closets—yes, plural—still hold her one-of-a-kind period pieces by Karl Lagerfeld for the film The Sun Also Rises (“he fitted me the day before his big fashion show,” she says), boots from Dr. Quinn, and the glamorous 1940s Nolan Miller dresses from Crossings. “I wear those a lot still,” she says.
Still, Seymour will always be the actor who showed up to set with a suitcase full of her own camera-ready clothes. “Ever since, every job I ever go to, I take with me what I think would fit the character,” Seymour says. Sometimes, her preparedness comes in handy—even on big-budget films. “Wedding Crashers had a budget up the wazoo [but] they couldn’t find exactly the dress for the wedding,” she recalls. Luckily, “I had been given all these Escadas—all the runway samples.”
