Léa Seydoux, the path to full-fledged actress

Historically, French cinema has had many actresses who capitalize on a trend, movement or era. From Anna Karina to Isabelle Huppert, from Michelle Morgan to Juliette Binoche, from Jeanne Moreau to Jeanne Balibar, from Brigitte Bardot to Marion Cotillard, from Catherine Deneuve to Sophie Marceau. The last decade of French cinema belongs in itself to Léa Seydoux, who has just released The Beast (La bestia), a fantasy genre film directed by Bertrand Bonello in which she plays the ultimate hero, and who still has Dune on the billboard: Part II, In which he appears in the short story of Lady Margot Venring, who is part of the matriarchy of Bene Gesserit.

Born 38 years ago, Seydoux is the granddaughter of Alsatian millionaire Jérôme Seydoux, who founded TV channel La Cinq with Silvio Berlusconi in 1986 and bought the historic Pathé production company in 1991. Jérôme's brother has headed Gaumont for decades, so much of the film industry French belongs to the domains of the Seydoux family.

No wonder cinema captured Lea and she made her debut as an actress at the age of twenty. With a very particular beauty, far from the fashionable clichés regarding French cinematography, as cold as it is sweet, always with a touch of melancholy, Seydoux very quickly put her career back on track and can be counted on the fingers of the hand of relevant French auteurs with whom he had not worked. . In a short time, he became one of the most sought-after attendees.

Three films with Bonello

Initially it was Catherine Breillat who gave him a minor role in the film Una vieja amante (2007), starring Asia Argento. The following year, he reached out to one of his frequent directors, Bertrand Bonello, who had directed him in War (2008), Saint Laurent (2014), and The Beast (La Bestia), and to whom he pitched the latter. One of his most attractive works is about a young woman who remembers from the future the lives and experiences of the past in two previous eras.

They will follow Christophe Honoré, who dyed her hair black in La belle personne (2008) and placed her at the center of a series of sexual and cultural motifs at the institute. She was directed by Jessica Hausner in Lorde (2009) and Rebecca Zlotowski in Belle Épine (2010), as a teenager who lives only for nights, parties, music and drugs. Woody Allen stopped in Paris to film Midnight in Paris (2011) and gave her a small role.

Nothing compares to the resonance she and Adèle Exarchopoulos achieved in 2013 with The Life of Adèle, a gorgeous film about the relationship between two young women in which Seydoux sports the blue hair that gives the title of the comic in which the film appears, Blue. Warm color. They appeared in passages of uncertainty and scenes of intimate sexual life, and became the subject of controversy when they questioned the methods used by the film director, Abdellatif Kechiche.

Since then, Seydoux has wisely interchanged his work in auteur cinema with large-scale productions and American films. He has already appeared in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010) and Mission: Impossible. Phantasma Protocol (2011), where she showed her skills to be an icy and mysterious assassin, in the style of the Tom Cruise series. She had a role at the beginning of Tarantino's film The Damned (2009), as the French farmer's daughter.

Then came his foray into the James Bond saga starring Daniel Craig, which was fundamental in his making of Madeleine in Specter (2015) and Sin Tiempo para morir (2021) to understand the radical turn the 007 series would take and, for dessert, a role in the other great franchise of the moment, Dune Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

With Wes Anderson, an indie auteur who sounds more European than American, he would also fit in well: in The Grand Hotel Budapest (2014) and The French Chronicle (2021) he is part of the brilliant international cast at Anderson's disposal. . But even though things were going well on the other side of the Atlantic, Sydow was highly critical of Hollywood cinema and the role of women in it. It was not the case two years ago, when he declared: “In American cinema, people have a greater imagination and I have been offered roles that are completely different from what I usually do.” But recent experiences must not have been very positive for him: “You lose your freedom when pressure for money comes up.”

And in Europe they continue to demand it. Benoit Jacquot made her Marie Antoinette's reader in L'adeu a la reina (2012) and the heroine of the remake of Diari d'una cambrera (2015). He shot with Yorgos Lanthimos – The Lobster (2015) –, Bonita Mañana (2022)-, takes on contrasting and contrasting roles, ideal for avoiding classification.

She had no difficulty venturing into the worlds of David Cronenberg's novel “The New Body in Future Crimes” (2022), and she was even “Beauty” and Vincent Castle's Beast, in another reading of the classic novel “Beauty and the Beast” (2014). Overall actress.