Mother of actress Jane Seymour dies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Mieke Frankenberg, mother of actress Jane Seymour and a survivor of 3-1/2 years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp where she tended the sick without access to medicines, has died at age 93, the family said on Tuesday.

Born in Deventer, Netherlands, she died at her home in Middlesex, England, on Monday of complications from a stroke. Besides Seymour, she is survived by two other daughters, Dr. Anne Gould and Sally Frankenberg.

Married at age 20, she went to live in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony. The marriage broke up, and during World War II she became a prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp.

During this time she nursed the sick and dying with no medicines, using only her experience as a Red Cross volunteer. After the war she moved to England where she married Dr. John Frankenberg, who died in 1990.

Seymour said of her mother, "Friends and family were most important in her life. ... She would often remind her daughters, 'When life is difficult, do something to help someone else, and your problems will diminish. There is always someone much worse off than you.'"