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Jane Seymour is sharing her secrets to feeling young in her 70s.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE to mark the 20th anniversary of her hit 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers, the actress spoke about maintaining a youthful spirit as she gets older.
“I have to actually wake up in the morning and remind myself how old I am because inside of me, I would say I still feel like I’m maybe about 40 or 50, maybe 40,” she said. “I don’t know where all that time went, but I have the energy that I had when I was 40.”
Seymour, 74, said she has no problem powering through long days of filming.
“I work 12-, 14-hour days on sets and keep up with everyone,” she said. “I don’t need cue cards or anything. I learn pages after pages and I have a lot of energy and I think it’s because I keep working and I keep pushing myself to be better at what it is that I do because I love what I do — I think it keeps me young.”
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Spending time with family also keeps her feeling decades younger.
“I have grandchildren and my own children, some of whom are in their early 40s. I’m part of their social circle. So I’ve never in my real life ever been sort of put in the group of, ‘Oh, now you are an older person. You just hang out with people who play golf all the time,’ ” she explained. “Not at all. Quite the opposite.”
While chatting about her memorable role — and saucy topless scene — as matriarch Kathleen Cleary in Wedding Crashers and how it showed that women over 50 can be sexy and sexual, Seymour said, “I turn 75 next year and I’m very sexually active.”
She shared that she’s proud that Kathleen and other characters she’s played, including retiree and amateur detective Harry in Harry Wild, are “aspirational to women of a certain age, or to human beings in general, that it’s never too late to fall in love, that you can be sexy for as long as you feel like it.”
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She told PEOPLE she hears from fans “all the time” that they look to the example she’s set for living with confidence and vitality.
“I kind of have become, in some way, almost a poster child for there is life after 70. And I say the word 70 — there’s nothing about me that feels like that,” she said. “I kind of look at my mother when she was alive and at 50, I would say she was middle-aged. I don’t feel that way at all. I feel very energized. I’ve got more energy than most of the young people on the set. I work longer and harder and love it.”
The Live and Let Die star noted that she is “much more open-minded” about life now and “not stuck in my ways.”
And she’s certainly not “winding down,” she insisted.
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“I’ve got these people who keep saying to me, ‘Are you going to sell off? Are you going to downsize? Are you going to wind down?’ I go like, ‘Watch this space. I am winding up, okay?’ ” Seymour said.
“I am loving life. I call it experiential living. Now is it. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” she explained. “So I only want to spend my time doing things that I’m passionate about, that I really enjoy. And I make sure that, even if it’s work, that I turn it into a fun life experience.”
