Though her love didn't last long, the two remained friends since.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on October 20, 2022. It has since been updated.
After its release in 1980, Somewhere in Time became a household classic romance film. And it seems the love story expanded to off-screen, as well! Recently, at the TCM Classic Film Festival, Jane Seymour revealed how she and her costar Christopher Reeve fell hard for each other while making the time-travel romance. The actress has long spoken of the enduring friendship that germinated between the two while working on the film but has rarely discussed their romantic relationship, according to Entertainment Weekly. "Well, here comes the story that I'm officially telling you now, because Chris and I, when we made the film, we literally fell madly in love," Seymour confessed to TCM host Alicia Malone and an audience of several hundred classic movie lovers.
"When you see this film, you will see the real thing. But we didn't let anyone know. So a few of the people who worked on the show kind of sussed it out, but we were as subtle as we could be about it." Though this is not the first time Seymour has addressed her relationship, she has never spoken about it to such an extent. In fact, she became visibly emotional when discussing their love for each other and the forces of the universe that broke them apart.
She then shared that her love story with Reeves has a lot of similarities to that of her character in the movie, too. Apparently, their relationship ended the same day she filmed the scene in which her character, Elise, loses Reeve's Richard.
"We were madly in love and life was wonderful," she recalled. "We were both single; it was a fantastic, amazing experience. And then one day I came in to work [to film] one of the biggest scenes in the movie… Just before that, Chris had had an earlier call and I came in about half an hour later, and they said, 'Chris needs to talk to you about something.' I thought, 'That's really odd, we've had a long time to talk about things, so what could it be?'
"It was that he was about to have a baby, and that his ex-girlfriend hadn't told him, and that she'd just announced it to the world," Seymour continued. Reeve's ex, Gae Exton, was pregnant with their son, Matthew.
Despite receiving the crushing news, Seymour had to continue with her work, and pretend like everything was normal. They were filming a really romantic scene, and their characters had to be happy, which was a bit of a challenge for Seymour at the time.
"I then had to put my big-girl pants on," she said. "When I watch that scene, I can literally see the tears coming halfway up my eyeballs. And I just kept saying, 'You can't cry, you can't cry, you can't cry, you're happy. Elise is really, really happy right now.'"
But despite not being able to move forward with their relationship, the two managed to remain close friends. In fact, so much so that Seymour named her first son Kristopher, after her co-star.
"The good part of the story is that Chris went on to have these two beautiful children and we met one another on many occasions," Seymour told the festival audience. "We remained really, really close friends, literally until the day he died. I have to believe that I will one day see him somewhere in time."
References:
https://ew.com/movies/jane-seymour-christopher-reeve-fell-in-love-making-somewhere-in-time/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Albert Ortega/ Stringer
