It’s a cold, clear day in Paris, and the Shangri-La suite, where we’ve gathered for today’s cover shoot, is abuzz with activity. Léa Seydoux, poised in an armchair and draped in Louis Vuitton finery, absent-mindedly shimmies her shoulders in time to the Ray Charles song wafting from a speaker. She suddenly gets up, flings open the balcony doors, strides outside and throws out her arms as if to hug the nearby Eiffel Tower. ‘J’adore la France!’ she exclaims, impassioned. ‘C’est la joie de vivre! C’est le je ne sais quoi!’ A pause. ‘Where’s my baguette?’ She dissolves into selfmocking giggles. The Seydoux we are greeted with – bouncy, easy-going, jovial – is at odds with her rather austere, melancholic on-screen persona. This gap between her lived reality and presentation of it feels fitting for someone who seems constantly pulled between two contrasting poles: shyness and exhibitionism, withholding and revealing, Hollywood blockbusters and French dramas…
The latter is why we’re meeting. The prolific Seydoux has two movies out this spring that sit at opposite ends of the sci-fi spectrum. There’s Dune: Part Two, the sequel to the Oscar-winning intergalactic epic, which marks the actress’ return to mega-budget cinema following stints in the Mission: Impossible and Bond franchises. And The Beast, a loose, largely francophone Henry James adaptation that deals with the threat of AI and incels, is so experimental that it has a scannable QR code instead of closing credits. ‘My strength is that I’m able to travel and adapt,’ Seydoux says. ‘I have more freedom because I’m a European actress, which suits me. I’m not trying to be popular, I’m just trying to enjoy myself. In America you have to conform. I don’t want to adapt myself to the system, I want the system to adapt to me!’
Much like her latest Bond outing No Time to Die, which was delayed by the Covid pandemic three times before becoming the highest-grossing film at the UK box office in 2021, Dune: Part Two was also postponed, though this time because of the actors’ strike. ‘It’s always something!’ she says, cheerily. ‘Life is greater than you and you can’t control everything. I’m fine with that.’ Seydoux was not in the first Dune film, but her former Robin Hood co-star Oscar Isaac invited her to visit the set in Hungary, and she was ‘very impressed’ with what she saw. Wearing a navy cowl and cool-eyed expression, in Dune: Part Two she plays Lady Margot, a member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood who use genetic experimentation to elevate the human race. It was less the role that appealed to her than the chance to work with the director Denis Villene
