Jane Seymour has lived. Really lived.
The 70-year-old has been acting onscreen for over 50 years, and she hasn’t slowed down—the last few years of her IMDB looks like it belongs to a newly minted Hollywood starlet. She has done Bond and Battlestar Galactica, everything from East of Eden to Jane the Virgin. Three years ago, at 67, she did a Playboy spread. And this year her family so thoroughly celebrated her at her socially distanced surprise birthday party that it was as if, she says, she was attending her own wake.
“I’ve always felt that the only thing you take with you when you pass is the love you’ve shared and the difference you’ve made,” she says. That feeling—that life should be lived fiercely and thoughtfully—was impressed upon her from birth. Seymour’s mother survived World War II trapped in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. When Seymour was a child, her mother told her that in the camp, she dreamed she would make it through the war and find a way to work for Elizabeth Arden. That didn’t happen—she didn’t have the money or the connections.
“I got to live out her dream,” says Seymour. Her devotion to the art of skin care goes beyond passion—it is a philosophy that informs the way she lives. She has to commit completely to her regimen, use products she really believes in, because she’s more or less a cosmetic surgery teetotaler. “I haven’t done a facelift, or any of those things,” she says. “I don’t do peels and stuff with the plastic surgeons or derms because I never have time off to do it. I can’t suddenly say, ‘I’m not working because my face is going to be red for three weeks.’”
So she sticks to lifestyle choices and good products. She swears by her regimen—and her longtime role as spokesperson for the skin-care brand Crepe Erase—and the results belie the ease of her routine. “People that don’t even know what I’m doing accuse me of doing very expensive treatments,” she tells Glamour. “My philosophy is actually quite amazing because it’s something pretty much anyone can do.” It involves cleansing, gentle exfoliant, and no lying out in the sun.
Seymour is partnering with Crepe Erase on the #BodyWithSoul social campaign, which focuses on body love for women over 50. In a recent survey by the company of 1,000 women over the age of 50, respondents said they stopped feeling confident in the skin on their bodies at age 47, on average. For Seymour, who is not interested in taking up any less space today than she did 40 years ago, this will not do. She is a skin-care enthusiast and an unapologetic proponent of the fact that skin can be beautiful in every decade.
Her best skin-care advice? “Do what I do,” she says. “Which is: Never go to bed with dirty skin. And if you can accelerate the turnover of the skin with an exfoliant carefully, that’s a good idea. It depends on how thin your skin is or how much damage you’ve got. Always go to dermatologists to make sure you’re not getting any cancer or anything precancerous.” When she was young, she would “hang out with George Hamilton and fry my skin with olive oil and a reflective board.” It was, as she says, “sun worship.”
“I’m very lucky I did not get any of those pre-cancers. It could still happen, but I’m just very, very careful now,” she says. “The sun is is your life force and it also is dangerous—I say enjoy the sun, enjoy the swimming pool, but make sure you really are putting on as much sunscreen or protection as you can; wear a hat.” Oh, and one more thing: “Just because a product is expensive, it’s not the best. I hate to say it. It just isn’t.”
Still don’t believe she isn’t using lasers and professional peels to get great skin? Here, she sets the record straight. This is Jane Seymour’s skin-care routine, perfected over seven decades, for Glamour’s Drop the Routine.
My Cleanser
I use the Crepe Erase facial cleanser morning and night. I’m always testing out whatever else is out there on the market as well to see whether what we have compares to something that costs $300 or $500. And believe it or not, if you put it in the $500 bill and you told me how much I was spending on it, I probably could be fooled. If it’s good and it works, it doesn’t have to be the most expensive.
My Daytime Moisturizer
In the daytime, we have a moisturizer. I found that if I had too many layers on—with serum and tightener and this and that—when I was putting my makeup on, my makeup would start moving around and falling and disappearing. So I’m a minimalist—less is more. I like using Crepe Erase because its treatment actually goes into the skin and stays in there. So I find it a great base for makeup.
My Makeup Remover
I always take my eye makeup off. Some people, I know, sleep with their eye makeup, but I always take it off—it’s really important. I use something hypoallergenic, like Neutrogena. I don’t need to use the most expensive one.
But my trick—and I learned this from an eye doctor—I’ll get baby shampoo and and put lots of water in it to dilute it, and I'll just take a cotton swab and run it across my eyelashes, and it takes excess glue, waterproof mascara, any kind of oil in it, right off. And my eyes look fresh for the next day. I love that.
My Night Cream
When I want to plump, I use the Crepe Erase for plumping at night, which really plumps my face—I don’t do all those injectables.
My Face Masks
I also love face masks. And at the moment I’ve been having fun because my son married a lovely girl in South Korea, and they’re all over the face masks. She keeps having me try things straight from South Korea, which I love. My favorite is Dr. Jart+ Dermask Water Jet Vital Hydra Solution.
My Eye Patches
I love those Skyn Iceland patches you put under your eye. On every movie set I’m on these days, they put an eye patch on me, then they do my eye makeup first, and then they remove the patch and do the foundation. I think that is a really, really great trick because the powder and the mascara always falls down under your eyes and that undereye is very delicate—you want to be very careful with it. You don’t keep wiping it to get the mascara and eye shadow that’s fallen.
My Treatments
At night, I either use a retinol product from SkinMedica, or once in a while I’ll use an alpha-hydroxy wipe.
My Body Treatment
Crepe Erase has an alpha-hydroxy acid for your body that I love; I’ll only use at night, obviously, because I’m all about exfoliating when you’re not anywhere near the sun and then protecting your skin when you are in the sun. So I’ll use that.
My Neck Cream
At night I like to really treat my neck, and the Crepe Erase one is wonderful because it’s got these little ball bearings on it. So when you put it on, it massages and goes really deeply into the skin. And whatever this stuff is, it really, really works. I find that the worst signs of aging are crepey skin and crepey neck. Some people will go a whole number on their face [with skin treatments], and then their face literally has nothing in common with the rest of their body. So I take the products everywhere on my body. When you age, you don’t just get crepey on your chest and on your arms, but you get crepey on your shins and knees. And people laugh at me, but I slather this stuff all over there. And then I go and get a pedicure, and they say, “Well, wait a minute. Why is your skin so soft? You’re 70! What are you doing? Do you get lasers?” I tell them, “No, I’m not doing anything. Nothing. I’m just using this Crepe Erase stuff.”
My Sun Protection
I like using sunscreen that’s already in the moisturizer. And I don’t ever just lie in the sun. Never. I always wear a really good hat and sunglasses. And you know, I’ll put a shawl or a scarf around my body if I feel I’m getting too much sun exposure. I don’t sun-worship.
My Devices
I bought something that has those lights, the blue light and the red light—the Celluma. This doctor said that after people had plastic surgery, they have treatments of this red light, blue light, and it also can help with acne. I did find it helped my skin. I also got one of those face roller things a long time ago, before most people used them! I think anything that stimulates the blood supply is good. When you have a facial, that’s basically what they’re doing—they're massaging these these products into your skin. So a really good upward-motion massage is great.
My Lip Balm
I always use a good lip balm. I have had the privilege of trying brands that I love. I mean, Sisley is a fabulous high-end brand. But I’ll use anything that has an SPF on it and hits my counter.
