LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) Although she has had a long and varied career on big screen and small, long-haired British beauty Jane Seymour is best known to TV audiences as the plucky frontier physician of CBS’ durable hit "Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman."

Starting Wednesday, Nov. 17, Seymour gets to return to her vamp roots with the start of a five-episode stint on The WB’s "Smallville."

"I’ve been taking some things recently," she says, "that are quite different from what I’m known for doing. Not that I wasn’t known for doing these things before ’Dr. Quinn’ — I’ve been playing these evil vamps for many, many years — but with selective memory on the part of the networks, they’ve forgotten that I did that."

Starting with the episode "Bound," Seymour plays Genevieve Teague, the mysterious mother of Jason (Jensen Ackles), the boyfriend that Lana (Kristin Kreuk) met while in Paris. Also in Paris, Lana had a bizarre experience in an old tomb that led to a mysterious tattoo appearing on her back. In "Bound," a vivid flashback to the incident leads Lana to believe that Genevieve and the tattoo are somehow connected. But is Genevieve friend or foe?

"It’s a really good question," Seymour says. "When I arrived, I was led to believe that I was pretty evil. Then they said that I wasn’t necessarily that evil, but I could be. And so, I played it that way, because of course, evil people believe they’re absolutely right in their choices, and they’re not evil at all. So when you play someone evil, you play them the same way as when you play somebody good, because as far as you’re concerned, you’re doing this for the right motives.

"So it depends on what they put me into in terms of the story whether I am perceived to be evil or not. I definitely played it with an edge of evil."

The role also required appearing in flashbacks to the distant past, which played on two of Seymour’s strengths: her ability to pull off period costumes, and her ability to speak French.

"I span centuries," she says. "When I put period clothes on, I feel like I’m in blue jeans. It’s not a threat to my identity at all. I feel quite comfortable. In fact, I worked out the other day that I had never actually been in 17th-century garb, so that was quite fun. However, it had a headdress that left a very large horseshoe mark on my forehead, which was a little worrying.

"I wore a very large, long dress. I was watching Kristin, as another character, with a tattoo on her back, being burnt at the stake. I was happily saying, ’Burn, you, burn,’ in French. ’You betrayed me, now you will die.’ Those are my magical words."

"Smallville" has been rife with guest-stars this year after making headlines last season with an appearance by Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in the movies, and who died unexpectedly on Oct. 10.

This season, Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the same movies, made an appearance. Although Seymour was not in any "Superman" movies, she did do the romantic drama "Somewhere in Time" with Reeve, which makes her sort of a "Superman" in-law.

"I am," she says. "Actually, Chris had told me about ’Smallville,’ and I was going to call Chris on Monday [Oct. 18] to tell him I was going to do ’Smallville’ and to tell him I was coming out with a whole line of products based on our movie. That’s the other side of my life, the design life.

"We filmed at a place called the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island [in Michigan], and I’ve just come out with a whole line of bedding and furnishings called the Grand Hotel Mackinaw Island. Chris didn’t know about this, and I was do to speak to him and tell him about that and also about ’Smallville.’

"But as we all know, I couldn’t do that, it was quite shocking."

After a 1995 horse-riding accident that left him paralyzed from a spinal injury, Reeve became an outspoken advocate of spinal-cord and stem-cell research, and had resumed working as an actor and director. His increased visibility made news of his death even more distressing.

"I know that Chris had a number of occasions where he was much sicker than the rest of the world knew," Seymour says. "But I think this was a shock to everyone, unbelievably sad. But look at the difference he’s made to the world — unbelievable."

While Genevieve may or may not be evil, Seymour sees her appearance on "Smallville" as a good thing.

"There are a lot of reasons why I’m supposed to be there," she says, "not the least of which is they have a hit show, and they do really interesting, fun things on it. If they think they can do something interesting and fun with me, I’m in the mood. There you go."