Not every actress can work with Woody Allen, win a Palme d’Or and (possibly) become a Bond girl in just five years, but LÉA SEYDOUX’s nonchalant allure is hard to resist, finds MORWENNA FERRIER.
It is an Indian summer’s afternoon in Saint-Germain-des-Prés when Léa Seydoux rushes into the Café de Flore a little late, muttering apologies. At first glance, hair tied up, clutching what can only be described as a very practical bag, Seydoux seems almost ordinary. Then she breaks into her exquisite, gappy, disarming smile and, just like that, you understand precisely why this 29-year-old actress has been the recipient of awards with accolades such as ‘Female Revelation’ and ‘Best Depiction of Seduction’.
“I come here a lot,” Seydoux says, as the waiters guide us upstairs and out of sight. “On the street in Paris, everyone stares. It helps that I’m dressed like this,” she says, indicating her incongruous navy Miu Miu capri pants, Rag & Bone military jacket, denim Bonpoint shirt and quirky yellow trainers. “I spend so much of my life dressed for the camera that off-camera I am super-casual. It’s the eternal search for anonymity!” she laughs.
In Seydoux’s native France and among the international trendsetting crowd, that search is becoming increasingly difficult. Hers is a face and name to know, one that conjures deferential ‘Oohs’. She has that indefinable something that so many of her countrywomen possess, marking her as one who makes her own rules and turns heads while doing it. It’s a trite, overused word, but Léa Seydoux is undoubtedly, categorically, cool.
Born into a film dynasty that includes her actress mother Valérie Schlumberger and grandfather Jérôme Seydoux, chairman of French film company Pathé, her childhood was itinerant yet happy. She recalls vacations with family friend Christian Louboutin (“A wonderful, elegant man”), dinners with Azzedine Alaïa (“Lovely”), and hanging out with Jean Paul Gaultier (“Kind and funny”), all friends of her stepmother, model Farida Khelfa. Seydoux decided to go into acting when she was 19 because she needed to express herself: “Not in a pretentious way, I was just shy – it was a vocation born from necessity. I was very uncool.”
She credits her sister, Camille, 32, with turning that around. Camille is responsible for Léa’s closet – “Old Hollywood with edgy details”– and the two have helped each other’s careers (Camille now also styles actresses Bérénice Bejo and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). “Camille likes the golden era of glamor-chic, and she herself is immaculate, in a good way,” says Seydoux. “When she was 15, Christian made her a pair of shoes. I said, ‘I want some too!’ I was 12 – ha! Really, though, I just wanted to fit in.” These days, the pair travel together. “It’s nice for me to be with my sister. [Set life] can be hard and lonely.”
‘Red-carpet’ Seydoux is, of course, far from uncool. Dressing up is something that thrills her – “I love Agnès B., Hermès and vintage finds” – and her look is now closely aligned with her recent campaigns for Miu Miu and Prada. Her personal aesthetic carries through to her public appearances – her hair has been dyed several colors (“In the last year it’s been blue, brown and red”) but is always the right side of undone, the essence of the French look, explains Seydoux. “A lot of French actresses don’t wash their hair and use a stick to color their roots, [whereas] I like to be clean. But I am lazy… I forget to wax or shave.’’ She also happily admits to not really exercising, but eats a “balanced diet”, she says, as she indelicately spears melon from her plate, chunks flying onto the table. “I suppose the French look is a mix of sophistication and style but without the polish; without the [perfect] teeth and manicures.”
Her latest film, Saint Laurent, celebrates the beauty of such style – Seydoux plays the late Loulou de la Falaise, Yves’s enduring muse. The second of 2014’s biopics about the designer, this one is “less commercial, more complex”, according to the actress. “It is only a small role, but it is wonderful to look at. I love visually stimulating films. To do French films, smaller ones, is very important.”
She is one of the few actresses of her generation who can say that without a hint of irony. Despite working for less than a decade, Seydoux has ratcheted up a roster of colleagues, naming Louis Garrel, Vincent Cassel and Woody Allen, who directed her in Midnight in Paris, as among her favorites. Would she work with Allen again? “I have no plans to. But yes, I look at the phone and cry, ‘Woody! Where are you?’” she laughs.
One of Seydoux’s skills has been to flip seamlessly from indie films to Hollywood blockbusters: from French TV drama La belle personne to Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol; from the Palme d’Or-winning Blue Is the Warmest Color to… Bond? Last month, Twitter exploded with rumors that she would star in the as-yet-untitled next installment of the franchise. So, is she? “Non!” she exclaims, collapsing into giggles, “Non!” One could probably put money on that non meaning yes.
With a reputation for being something of an ice queen, the amount of giggling and even guffawing from Seydoux is a surprise. She puts her frosty reputation down to old-fashioned nerves. “It’s hard being in the public eye,” she says. “At Cannes for Midnight in Paris, I was standing next to Woody and everyone said, ‘You’re so moody’, but I was just terrified!” And in truth, there is nothing icy about her, apart from her skin, which, without makeup, really is ethereal. “I'm fascinated that people always comment on my ‘makeup-less face’. It’s just my skin,” she shrugs.
Despite her nerves, Seydoux has a fairly liberal attitude to nudity: last year, she posed nude for the cover of Lui, France’s answer to Playboy. “Yes, I’m shy, but you saw Blue Is the Warmest Color? Well, now I can just…” she trails off, dramatically mimicking whipping off her clothes. “No, seriously, I don’t like being naked. If I have to, I do [it]. I don’t want to be afraid. I think about what being nude means, but I try to leave my body, to escape it. It’s difficult to be a woman because we are sexual objects, but it’s part of our power so we have to use it. It’s changed a lot since Emmanuelle.”
As yet another piece of melon flies off her plate, she pauses, with that famously imperfect but captivating smile, to add: “Maybe I am not a good example of French style.” We beg to differ.
Saint Laurent is out Sept 30 (US)
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