Despite decades of success, the Dr Quinn star says life is all about love and family. By James Mottram

Wearing a peach skirt and crochet-style jacket, Jane Seymour is gazing out of a hotel window across the misty Edinburgh skyline. "I came here when I was very young to the Fringe," she reflects. "I was a teenager."

The actress wasn’t in the spotlight then; she was just a "cheerleader" for a theatrical troupe she was friends with. It was the mid-Sixties and she still remembers bunking down on floors with 20 others. "We were all very young and innocent ..." she smiles, though she does recall that "the sleeping bags were moving".

Back then, she couldn’t – even in her wildest dreams – have imagined what the next decade would hold. By 1973, she was on television in The Onedin Line and on the big screen as Bond girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die. Just 22, this trained dancer from Hayes in Middlesex was "picked out of obscurity" to play opposite new 007 Roger Moore. "The best part about it is, I got to meet Paul McCartney," she beams. The ex-Beatle, who did the theme, congratulated her at the premiere. "I nearly lost my legs."

The glamour didn’t stop there. She talks about friendships with the late singer Johnny Cash and his wife June (she and her fourth husband, actor-producer James Keach, whom she divorced last year, were instrumental in 2005 Oscar-win-ning Cash biopic Walk The Line). And, with some prodding from me, about the 14th century manor house she used to own in Bath with acoustics so perfect, Radiohead rented it to record their seminal album OK Computer.

"I never look back, that’s the crazy thing," she says, before I force her to recall career highlights. Eight Golden Globe nods and two wins, for 1981 mini-series East of Eden, and Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, the hit show set in America’s Old West that ran from 1993 for six seasons and 149 episodes. "That was very unusual," she says. "At that time, it was unheard of to have the woman in a lead in a medical show. We broke all the rules with that one."

In between, there was the Emmy win for Onassis: The Richest Man In The World, about Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, in which she played opera singer Maria Callas – a shoot she remembers for quite different reasons. After contracting bronchitis in Madrid, she was injected by a doctor with a dose of antibiotics, but the needle went into her vein and she went into anaphylactic shock. It was as near-death an experience as you can get. "I know what it feels like to die," she nods.

If this sounds melodramatic, Seymour is not one for hysterics. She tells the story calmly, carefully, in an English accent untainted by years abroad. As all around her screamed, "The next thing I knew I was out of my body," she reveals. "There was no panic, no stress, no pain, just calmly looking at a white light and then looking down – at me." Fortunately, an injection of adrenaline and cortisone resuscitated her. "I feel like that was a gift, because it makes you accept and realise life."

With a Jewish father and a Dutch-Protestant mother, Seymour grew up with the idea that life is fragile. "We aren’t raised to think about death," she says. "We choose not to think about it." Both her parents had survived Second World War – her mother had even been interned in a Japanese POW camp. Her paternal grandfather, meanwhile, escaped the Czarist pogroms when he was 14, arriving in London’s East End to eventually open his own hairdressing business.

So it’s little wonder that Seymour, at 65, is still hungry for life’s opportunities. This month, she can be seen in Fifty Shades of Black, a bawdy movie parody of the EL James-written S&M romance books, in which she plays Claire, the wealthy trash-talking mother to Marlon Wayans’ Christian Black. "When I first read the script, I went, ‘This is so wrong that it’s right,’" she recalls. Wayans, who co-wrote the script, calls Seymour a consummate pro. "As beautiful as she is, she’s not vain. She doesn’t stop takes to fix her make-up."

Her other recent credits are just as eclectic: Bereave, a marital drama with Malcolm McDowell; About Scout, "a little indie movie" with Ellen Burstyn and Danny Glover; and High Strung, a dance film set in the world of classical ballet (serving a reminder that, just nine years ago, Seymour competed in Dancing With The Stars, the US version of Strictly). "At the moment, I’m at that stage of my career where it’s not about money," she says. "It’s all about doing really interesting work."

Based in LA, Seymour lives near most of her six children, from her four marriages. "We’re a very close family," she says. "I’m very much a family person. I have two sisters. Everything is all about family." It’s not hard to imagine Seymour as a fine mother, dispensing advice and feeling in equal measure. If there’s a secret to a successful life, she’s discovered it. "The only two things you take away when you die is the love you’ve shared and the difference you’ve made. That’s very simple isn’t it?"

Fifty Shades of Black opens on Friday, March 11. 