I tell her from the outset that hers goes beyond beauty and talent, both recognized worldwide, and that what really distinguishes her is that melancholic look, which rests on her charming dark circles. “I have always been very melancholic, since I was a baby. There is a photo of me in which I am barely a month old, and I already have that look ”, confesses the thirty-seven-year-old actress who is the mother of a six-year-old boy, the result of her discreet relationship with the model André Meyer. “It is interesting to observe newborns, to see how they evolve, to see that we never change. I look at my son, and I think of that Nietzsche phrase that says ‘become who you are’. We dedicate our lives to developing a personality that is already predetermined”.
“There is a sadness in Léa that seems infinite and that seduces me”, also admits Mia Hansen-Løve, who has directed her for the first time in A Beautiful Morning, another prodigy of intelligence and sensitivity brand of the house, which hits theaters on March 31. “I don’t know if she’s in life, because I don’t know her well enough, but she shows up on the screen. It is something that is already in her. She never artificially goes looking for it, it’s never calculated. It is enough for her to open a door, she appears, and she already gives it to you, ”concludes the director. “I had the feeling of filming a Bressonian actress. She is one of those who internalizes the characters, her way of acting is minimalist. She does not try to show or prove anything, she never underlines the intentions of her characters. She doesn’t even try to seduce you, you love her. And I love that, because I always tell the actors to act as little as possible. Léa, we could almost say that she does not act ”. She limits herself to being there, and with her presence, and her sad look, she fills everything.
The director also confesses that there were moments during the filming of this unprejudiced story of adultery in which Seydoux made her cry: “It had never happened to me, and there is a lot of crying in my films, and I always find it very moving, but the thing about Léa It’s another dimension.” When I repeat these same words to her, the actress takes iron from them, and she smiles: “I have also made other directors cry, like Xavier Dolan”, who directed her in Only the End of the World (2016). But that one cries all the time, I tell him about the young Canadian director, and we both laugh, because it’s true. Dolan always cries. At the slightest occasion. When Léa’s huge smile appears, it never ceases to amaze. And she also enjoys clowning around, as she recently demonstrated in Bruno Dumont’s sardonic political satire France, side by side with Blanche Gardin, quirky French stand-up star.
Another characteristic of Léa Seydoux is the contrast between her apparent shyness and her ability to undress in films, reaching self-parody extremes such as in The French Chronicle, her second film with Wes Anderson, where she played the model of an artist played by Benicio del Bull. She does not always undress at the request of the directors or directors. Desplechin confessed to me that, during the filming of Fantasies of a writer, she caught him completely off guard in that regard. A decade ago, when she had just been on the cover of Lui, I already asked her about her curves, because a friend, today a Podemos deputy, described sharing that image on networks as macho, and I wanted to contrast it with the interested party: “I don’t think it’s macho absolutely. Men and women are different, and beauty and seduction are very feminine powers and it would be a shame not to use them. And also, yes, I am who I am, I have curves, and I’m sick of seeing scrawny girls in magazines. He made it so clear to me then that on this occasion we talk better about the blush that, without warning, lights up his cheeks when the scene of the first kiss with Melvil Poupaud in A Beautiful Morning: “It is true that it happens to me often. I remember a script reading with Daniel Craig. At the moment of saying ‘I love you’, I was like a tomato. He looked at me in a strange way, as if to say ‘we have a problem’. I was so red that I had to stop, because I felt very uncomfortable. Blush, smile and many tears, the perfect French.
