As the long-awaited Spectre hits screens, French actress LÉA SEYDOUX explains how she has reinvented the Bond girl. By SOPHIE HEAWOOD
Léa Seydoux keeps bursting into song. She also manages to speak philosophically about life in that considered way that, admittedly, only the French can. Yet every so often, her voice takes flight, and suddenly there is singing, tra-la-laa-ing, in the room. Has the past year working on the much-anticipated new James Bond film, Spectre, combined with the promotional schedule following it, perhaps sent her a little...crazy?
While she looks radiantly calm and collected, the answer appears to be yes. After drifting off into a bit of her beloved Françoise Hardy, Seydoux admits that her “brain is scrambled”, before laughing and apologizing. “I’m going on vacation on Tuesday, to the Caribbean, with my friends,” she trills, clearly delighted that the end is in sight. “La-da-di-dooooo, bye bye!”
Seydoux is more than happy to talk to me about Spectre, the 24th Bond movie, in which she plays “how do you call it – the love interest?” What she isn’t allowed to do is tell me anything that actually happens in it: at time of writing, the plot is a state secret. I have only been permitted a 16-minute preview, but it did provide vital clues about Seydoux’s beguiling character, Madeleine Swann. A complex heroine holed up in a dilapidated house in the mountains, in typical Bond style her relationship with the spy moves to the bedroom, where she has total control over him. It seems Swann understands how Bond’s mind works, giving her access to his innermost thoughts in a way we have never seen before. Hers is a whole new kind of Bond girl, affirms Seydoux.
“I think she is distinct from all the others. She’s not really a Bond girl – she’s a real character. I made her mine,” says the actress. “When you’re acting, it’s always personal. It’s about yourself, in a way.”
After making her name in art-house drama Blue Is the Warmest Colour, 30-year-old Seydoux is proud to be part of the blockbusting Bond franchise. “They are great films,” she says. “Sam Mendes is a very intelligent director, and it’s always nice to work with intelligent people. But he is instinctive, too, so he has the head and the heart.”
The extremes of filming on location were challenging for Seydoux. “It was quite beautiful up there, but the mountains were really high, which I hate. What was more incredible was shooting in Morocco, in a sandstorm in the Sahara. We had goggles, we were walking in the sand and [laughing] because it was so funny, but also so amazing.” She reflects on this for a moment. “It was that feeling of something that surpasses us.” It’s not every actress who would talk about her existential reaction to being overwhelmed by sand.
Seydoux is clearly a thinker, though this wasn’t always apparent to those around her. Born into a well-known French family – her grandfather is the chairman of Pathé; her mother, an actress, descends from the affluent Schlumberger family – her life was “privileged in some ways, but not in others”. At a young age, her parents split up and her school wrote her off. She was terrible at tests and believes she may have dyslexia. She once took an IQ test in which she performed so badly “they called my mother and were like, ‘Your daughter has a serious problem.’ [My score] was very low! Very!”
She laughs as she says this, the memory not as painful as it could have been. I wonder if this is because she already sensed, at that young age, life held something beyond schoolbooks for her. “I did feel rejected, but I was already so excited about the world,” she agrees. “I just wasn’t suited to school. I was already watching people. I realized that the world is hostile. I [thought], ‘OK, how am I going to survive in this world?’ I was like…” She looks around, baring her teeth with a gnashing noise. “Like an animal. Some people are not born strong and they invent themselves, and so they become strong individuals by their own will. I think I’m part of that. I made myself strong.”
Seydoux and her elder sister Camille are very close, and she now works as her stylist. “It’s difficult to be very focused on your clothes when you’re working. Camille has the ideas. For example, the yellow Prada dress I wore to the 2015 BAFTAs – that was such a good look.” Seydoux describes her own tastes as classical and chic, rather than trend-led. “I don’t try to be modern, I prefer to be feminine. On the red carpet, what’s most important is how you pose. You have to stand straight and be relaxed – and that is difficult.”
Seydoux then points to her shoes, which look a little like the clumpy support sandals you might wear when your leg is in plaster. “As you can see, my shoes are very poetic,” she says, before we both burst out laughing.
She does, however, know a lot about good shoes. Family friend Christian Louboutin was present in the hospital when she was born, and designed her very first pair of shoes. “He’s someone I really love, deeply,” says Seydoux, lighting up at the mention of his name. Was he the one who knew she was going to make it? “Not at all! For him, I was always just the little blond baby. I think he was surprised by my success. Astonished by it.”
Well, Louboutin had better get used to it – this little blond-baby- turned-Bond-girl is here to stay. Spectre is out now (UK); 6 Nov (US)
Agreed, her best look so far. Can we talk about how perfect her makeup is here?
