Léa Seydoux

Léa Seydoux (born July 1, 1985, Paris, France) is a French actress known for her varied performances in both French and English in films such as La Belle Personne (2008; The Beautiful Person), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and La Vie d’Adèle (2013; Blue Is the Warmest Color). She is among the first five women to have won a Palme d’Or, the top prize of the Cannes film festival.

Early life

Seydoux was born in Paris to Valérie Schlumberger, a costume designer and philanthropist, and Henri Seydoux, a businessman. The Seydoux family has a long history with the French film industry: her grandfather Jérôme Seydoux served as chair of the production company Pathé and her great-uncle Nicolas Seydoux as chair of the Gaumont Film Company. When her parents divorced and her father remarried, documentary filmmaker Farida Khelfa became her stepmother. Despite this pedigree, Seydoux did not initially envision a career in film for herself and instead studied opera as a teenager. It was not until after she graduated high school and enrolled in a course at the experimental theater program Les Enfants Terribles that she became seriously interested in acting.

First roles in France and Hollywood

Seydoux soon began to earn supporting roles in French films, including the teen comedy Mes copines (2006; Girlfriends), the romantic drama Une Vieille Maîtresse (2007; The Last Mistress), and the drama Des Poupées et des anges (2008; Dolls and Angels). Her breakthrough performance came in Christophe Honoré’s La Belle Personne, an adaptation, set in modern times, of the 17th-century novel La Princesse de Clèves (The Princess of Clèves) by Marie-Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette. Seydoux starred as Junie, a teenager torn between her boyfriend and an affair with her Italian teacher, and Variety called her “an unquestionably strong screen presence.” She also received the first of several career César Award (the French equivalent of the Academy Awards) nominations, for most promising actress.

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Quentin Tarantino’s World War II farce, Inglourious Basterds (2009), marked Seydoux’s Hollywood debut, though her character, a French farmer’s daughter at the mercy of a sadistic Nazi officer (Christoph Waltz), had no lines. Thereafter she continued working in both France and the United States. Other English-language appearances during this period include roles in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010), Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), and Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol (2011).

International acclaim: Blue Is the Warmest Color

In 2013 Seydoux and costar Adèle Exarchopoulos earned international attention for their performances in Blue Is the Warmest Color. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the three-hour coming-of-age film follows the relationship and breakup between the wide-eyed Adèle (Exarchopoulos) and the charismatic, more-experienced Emma (Seydoux). At Cannes, Kechiche, Seydoux, and Exarchopoulos were all awarded the Palme d’Or in recognition of their shared contributions (usually only the director receives the prize). Seydoux was nominated for best actress at the César Awards in 2014. However, the movie was criticized for featuring overlong sex scenes that were, according to Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, “voyeuristic” and “oblivious to real women.” Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the film was based, called the adaptation “coherent, justified and fluid” while also protesting Kechiche’s portrayal of lesbian sex as unrealistic and exploitative. Moreover, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos characterized Kechiche’s on-set behavior—which included spewing verbal abuse and insisting on unrelenting reshoots of the sex scenes—as “horrible” and said they would not work with him again.

Later roles

In 2014 Seydoux joined the ensemble cast of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Also that year she played Belle in La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) and Loulou de la Falaise, the muse of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, in the biopic Saint Laurent. She appeared as the psychologist Madeleine Swann, the latest love interest of James Bond (or “Bond girl”), in Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021). Seydoux also found a foothold in dystopian drama and sci-fi, appearing in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015), David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (2022), and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024). In 2021 she collaborated again with Anderson, this time in a larger role, in The French Dispatch (2021).

As her international star has risen, Seydoux has also continued to appear in French-language films. These include starring roles in Tromperie (Deception) and France (both 2021) as well as Un Beau Matin (2022; One Fine Morning) and La Bête (2023; The Beast).

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