Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg Current Name Jun 2026

Since adopting her professional name, she has built a career spanning over five decades in television and film. Notable milestones include:

The current name of the person born is Jane Seymour .

On June 12, 1947, Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg swore before a magistrate that she would abandon her birth surname “for all purposes and forever.” The deed was published in the London Gazette . No one objected. In fact, no one noticed. joyce penelope wilhelmina frankenberg current name

The British-American actress adopted this stage name at age 17, taking it from King Henry VIII's third wife because it was more "saleable" and easier for audiences to remember than her birth name. Early Life and Origins

In September 1938, a Quaker aid worker named Margaret Ashby offered Joyce a position as a domestic servant in Surrey, England. The catch: Joyce would travel not as a refugee but as a “transfer student,” using a forged Swedish passport. Her mother’s blue eyes and flaxen hair made passing as non-Jewish possible. But the name Frankenberg was a death sentence. Since adopting her professional name, she has built

“Frankenberg is not my name now. But it was my father’s name. And before that, it was no one’s enemy.”

She is a British-American actress best known for her role as Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) and the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman . She chose the stage name "Jane Seymour" after King Henry VIII's third wife, as it seemed easier for audiences to remember. No one objected

She sat on the floor of her tiny bedsit in Pimlico and wept for three hours. Then she walked to Somerset House and requested a deed poll form. She could not resurrect her father. But she could decide, for the first time, what her name meant.

In England, Joyce worked as a cook’s assistant, then a nanny, then a secretary for a Jewish relief committee. She never spoke of the Frankenbergs. Her parents were not so lucky: Elias was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942; Helene followed voluntarily and died of typhus in 1944. Joyce learned of their fate in a Red Cross letter delivered on V-E Day, May 8, 1945.

Among her possessions was the original deed poll. On the back, in her elegant calligraphy, she had written: