Jane Seymour says filming Live and Let Die brought her dangerously close to a snake bite after a stunt performer lost control of the reptile.

The actress recalled screaming as the animal moved directly toward her before specialists caught it at the last second.

Seymour, now 75, played Bond girl Solitaire in the 1973 film. Looking back during an interview with CNN, she described the intense fear that overtook her while shooting the sequence.

The scene placed Solitaire in peril as a snake was used to threaten her character. Seymour explained the setup simply: “Solitaire is going to be tortured with this snake.”

Her fear was not merely part of the performance. Seymour said, “Now, this dude here with the goat thing.

His job was to pick up the snake and taunt me with a snake. And I hate snakes. Hate hate hate snakes.”

The stunt took a frightening turn when the snake bit the person handling it. Once the animal was dropped, Seymour said it immediately began moving toward her.

“Anyway, the guy there is doing it. And then the snake came around and bit him, and he dropped the snake. And the snake came straight for me, and I’m like screaming,” Seymour recalled.

The terrifying moment ended just before the reptile reached her. “The snake people caught it at the last second,” she said, describing how narrowly the situation was brought under control.

A promo shot of Jane Seymour for Live and Let Die (1973). pic.twitter.com/ahaYiaRef4

— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) November 16, 2025

Even before the animal escaped the performer’s grip, Seymour was struggling to hide her distress.

The director apparently mistook her fearful expression for something far less alarming and instructed her to stop smiling.

“They are getting the snake really close to me. And the director says, ‘Stop smiling’. I go, ‘That’s not smiling, that’s abject horror.’ I go, ‘No, no, that’s too close. That’s too close.’ Oh my God, I was terrified of that snake,” Seymour said.

Seymour was only 20 when she secured the part of Solitaire. She also offered a candid explanation for why she believed the producers selected her for the role.

“This was when I was 20 years old. I had just been announced as being a Bond girl. They only hired me because they were looking for someone to play a virgin. I think I’m the only Bond girl that was actually a virgin,” she said.

Live and Let Die marked Seymour’s first major Hollywood production, and she remembered its stunts as genuinely dangerous.

“It was real stunts with real people who almost died doing them,” the actress recalled.

Despite her intense fear of the snake, Seymour said the scene also allowed her to draw upon her experience as a dancer. That physical element became one of the aspects of the sequence that she enjoyed most.

“One of the things I loved the most was the snake scene, because I could use my dance skills and throw myself up there in the air and be held by all those men,” she remembered.

Seymour admitted that she did not initially grasp how strongly the Bond role would follow her throughout her career.

British press coverage, she said, continued to connect her with the film no matter what other work she completed.

“I don’t think I’ve realized what a big deal it would be… to this day, if I do anything with any British press, the only thing they will mention for my entire career is the Bond film,” Seymour said.

The association also affected how some producers and directors viewed her. Seymour eventually relocated to the United States in an effort to move beyond that image and find people who regarded her work differently.

“The same goes with a certain generation of producers and directors. So I came to America where they took me more seriously,” she added.

Decades after playing Solitaire, Seymour’s recollection remains dominated by the snake that escaped, the panic it caused, and the specialists who intervened.

The scene combined the physical movement she enjoyed with a danger that left her visibly terrified.

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