“When I played Madeleine, I was ‘first degree’: There was no distance, there was no irony. But Seydoux freely shifted from Bond talking points to off-handed analysis of her roles. This was not what I expected to hear in the “Bond bubble,” as her publicist referred to the film’s press operation at the hotel. And she’s conscious of her own alienation.” But she’s conscious of the fact that she’s also a tool of the system. “And she wants that - that was her ambition.
“She knows she’s part of the capitalistic system,” Seydoux mused about her character, France de Meurs, a TV journalist in crisis.
Her first comments weren’t about Bond, or “Wes,” but rather the existential critique in Dumont’s “France.” At a Midtown boutique hotel, she paused frequently, at times trailing off into silence, yet she beamed with affability and curiosity. “Spectre” in 2015 brought her into the Bond franchise, following a “Mission: Impossible” installment.ĭespite her sometimes imposing roles, Seydoux in conversation marches to the beat of her own drummer. The 36-year-old actress first broke through in art-house circles in 2008 with the French student-teacher romance “La Belle Personne.” She shared the Palme d’Or in 2013 at Cannes for the explicit “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” with her director, Abdellatif Kechiche, and co-star, Adèle Exarchopoulos. The wild array makes it hard to have a single image of Seydoux herself. “The French Dispatch” screened last week in the New York Film Festival and premiered last summer at Cannes, alongside three other Seydoux-starring films: Arnaud Desplechin’s Philip Roth adaptation, “Deception” Ildiko Enyedi’s period piece, “The Story of My Wife” and Bruno Dumont’s satirical drama “France.” The long-awaited Anderson picture follows the equally long-awaited juggernaut, “ No Time to Die,” starring Seydoux as Madeleine Swann opposite the outgoing Bondsman Daniel Craig. This year has been anything but boring for the actress. “It’s so great! It’s exactly the image that an American can have of the French: they are just so bored,” Seydoux said with a laugh.
Léa Seydoux - who plays a prison guard who models for an inmate - finds the name hilarious. The stories in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” take place in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé.