The 24-year-old actress Léa Seydoux was never particularly keen on films while she was growing up, despite strong family ties to the cinema industry in France. But things change quickly. Over the last five years, she debuted in a teen movie, worked with the scandalous filmmaker Catherine Breillat in the erotic costume drama ‘The Last Mistress’, and was nominated for a César, the French equivalent of an Academy Award, for her role in ‘La Belle Personne’. Léa recently played the farmer’s daughter in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’ and stars alongside Russell Crowe in ‘Robin Hood’. With a handful of small but perfectly placed roles, she can look back on her achievements to date with pride, knowing they are the result of hard graft rather than lucky connections. Léa was interviewed in Périgueux, where she was shooting ‘Le Roman de Ma Femme’ with director Jamshed Usmonov, the latest addition to her expanding on- and off-set family. Read More
Ryan Gilbey: What do you do when you’re not acting?
Léa Seydoux: (laughs) I live my life, you know? I always do different things each day. In my job and in my life I never know what I’m going to do. I don’t have any habits. I hope I never will.
RG: What’s your role in ‘Le Roman de Ma Femme’?
LS: I play a woman who is married to a lawyer. Every morning he goes jogging, but one morning he doesn’t come back and she has to ask one of her husband’s colleagues to help find out what happened. It’s an interesting script. Some parts of the movie seem to be one way; then you realise nothing is what you thought it was.
RG: Is it a challenging film to make?
LS: Of course, but for me making films always feels challenging because I am so shy. I’m always scared before shooting – sometimes even during shooting! I’ll read the script and think, ‘How on earth am I going to play this?’ The anticipation makes you anxious. You have to actually do the thing in order not to be scared. And that feeling of being scared, or not being safe, can be helpful for the part, depending on the character.
RG: Didn’t the acting classes help you with your shyness?
LS: They can help some people, but not me. I suppose with more experience, I may feel a little less shy. I only really started to work at age 19 or 20, so even though I am very busy now and my life has changed so much, I am still only at the beginning. What I like in acting is that you can forget yourself. When you are in costume, with the other actors and the director on set, you forget who you are. It becomes a game. A dangerous game, but still a game.
RG: Why do you say it’s dangerous?
LS: Because even though you’re playing a character, it’s still you up there on the screen. People are judging you. It’s your emotions, your body. If you’re naked in a scene, you might still have a complex about that, but you can’t show it. You may be prudish and want to be covered up even if the character is happy to be naked.
RG: You mentioned how much your life has changed. Was there a particular role that was the catalyst for that change?
LS: In France, ‘La Belle Personne’ was a big deal, partly because of the César nomination. And after the Tarantino film, maybe people started noticing me more.
RG: Had you wanted to act for a long time before you took classes?
LS: I think the first thing I wanted to do was to be an actress, but I decided to really make it happen when I was 18. I was an adolescent, I was feeling a little lost in my life, and I said to my friends,‘I really want to act.’ Some of them said I would never make it, because the industry is so tough. But one friend, an actor, advised me to take theatre classes. After that, I got an agent and started going to castings. But I had never been a cinephile.
RG: That’s surprising since your grandfather was chairman of Pathé and your great uncle was CEO of Gaumont. Your family seems to be so involved in cinema.
LS: Not my immediate family, not the people who raised me. My mother was a producer at one point, but she did lots of other things too.
RG: Has your family supported you in your career?
LS: They’ve given me freedom, which is very important. They don’t care as long as I like what I do, as long as I’m not a prostitute, you know? ( laughs ) Well, maybe I am kind of a prostitute! But at least I’m not a p*rno actress.
RG: How did you know acting was your call?
LS: It’s complicated. It was that little voice that you have inside you, you know? Also what I love about the job, now that I am doing it, is that every time you make a film it’s a new family. But it’s a family you choose. I love to be on set; all those people, all working together. It can be very intense.
RG: With the director as your mother or father …
LS: Yes, absolutely!
RG: In that case, what was it like to have someone as intense as Catherine Breillat as a mother?
LS: (laughs) Oh, she was a good mother. And one of my first mothers! She’s very cerebral. She helped me a lot.‘The Last Mistress’ was only my second film. My first part was in a stupid teen movie, so working with Catherine was much more intellectual. When I worked on the teen movie, I thought,‘Oh my God, if this is what cinema is like, it ’s going to be terrible!’ And then with Catherine it was more like, ‘Ah, yes, I can do some movies I believe in.’
RG: Do you remember how you felt during your audition for Tarantino?
LS: I was so nervous. It was in Paris. Originally I was going for the main female part, Shosanna. He was tired when I arrived. I came in and I was so shy. I was red like a tomato! ( laughs) I was sweating also. He looked at me and I could hear his thoughts: ‘Oh no, this one’s going to be terrible.’ But I played four scenes for him, and I think he was surprised that I was so confident. Afterwards I got the call to say I hadn’t got the part of Shosanna, but that Quentin still wanted me in the movie. The shoot wasn’t like anything I’d done before. ‘Robin Hood’ was the same – these are such enormous productions, and there is not much intimacy. But it is still fun and I’ve made good friends.
RG: Did you get to hang out with Russell Crowe on ‘Robin Hood’?
LS: Yes, we all went drinking with him sometimes. We smoked cigarettes and drank beer in his big trailer. I drank Guinness for the first time!
RG: Did you like it?
LS: Guinness? Not much.
