Jane's Addiction

Back in June 2006, Jane Seymour, the British-born actor best known Stateside as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was invited to play in the Northern Rock All-Star Cup, a celebrity golf tournament at The Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales, that pits a European team against an American one. Seymour, who grew up in Wimbledon, a London suburb, had just become a U.S. citizen, so she agreed to play for her new country. She compares playing golf to being on stage—"It's your moment," she says—and while she had played in corporate outings and celebrity tournaments before, the Wales event promised to be her biggest golf stage yet. The previous year's tournament, which featured Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones playing on opposing teams, had attracted thousands of spectators and international press coverage. Seymour, a perfectionist, gives her all to everything she does, so in true fashion, she dedicated herself to improving her game before the August event. "I said to myself, 'For the next two months, I will train for golf.'"

As Seymour tells her story, she is sitting in the spacious bathroom of her Malibu, Calif., home while a hairstylist and makeup artist fuss over her for a photo shoot. At 56, even in a pink robe and curlers, she has glamour to spare. Fine-boned and elegant, with long auburn hair and an unretouched face (yes, those are wrinkles, a sight rarely seen in Hollywood), she has a mature, self-assured beauty that served her well as the lusty politician's wife in Wedding Crashers, the 2005 hit film that convinced Hollywood she could do comedy. Seymour remains every inch the former ballerina who dreamed of dancing with Russia's Kirov Ballet before a knee injury redirected her into acting. With her clipped, precise speech and brisk manner, she could be the dance mistress putting her class through its paces at the barre.

Seymour and her husband, producer/director James Keach, are members of Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., home to two Jack Nicklaus layouts, one full-length course and one par 3. In 2006 the 18-hole course was closed for renovations, so every day for two months, Seymour played the par-3 course to prepare for the Wales tournament. Sometimes she had an instructor, but often she was alone. "There were two other people on the course: Bruce Jenner and Kenny?G. The two obsessed golfers in our club and me. That course is so precise and small that you're in all kinds of trouble if you don't go straight. So I got really good at chipping and putting. And it paid off."

The Northern Rock All-Star Cup was played in a Ryder Cup format: match play, best ball, alternate shot. Each side had 11 celebrities, including British TV star Bruce Forsyth and model Jodie Kidd for Team Europe, and Kenny G, Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper and Seymour for Team USA. The Americans lost, but Seymour never gave up. On the final hole of the tournament, her partner, actor Aidan Quinn, hit the ball into a greenside bunker. It was her job to get out.

"There were huge crowds, it was the end of the day, the cameras were there, and I'm thinking, 'Oh, this is impossible.' I got down in the sand and I couldn't even see the flag. I chipped the ball up, and then all of a sudden everyone starts roaring and I jumped up and the ball rolled, slowly but surely, right into the hole. The entire place went crazy. It was one of the greatest days of my life."

Seymour has had a rich and varied life, but not every day has been as triumphant. Yet, like one of the indomitable heroines she's known for, she approaches life's challenges the same way she approaches golf: Accentuate the positive. In golf, Seymour rarely keeps score, preferring a system of her own invention. "When I hit a ball and it goes where I intended it to, I give myself a star. Because at least at the end of the day, I can say that I had six shots that I felt really proud of."