Léa Seydoux felt invisible growing up, which is hard to believe when you see her onscreen now. She’s the type of magnetic performer that you can’t take your eyes off. And at the Telluride Film Festival , the French actress is featured in three high-profile films that couldn’t be more different—but what remains consistent is Seydoux’s transfixing work onscreen.
The Unknown , which first debuted at Cannes , is a dark, unsettling body-swap thriller; Alpha Gang is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum, a broad, silly alien-invasion comedy; and finally Gentle Monster, also a Cannes debut, is a harrowing tale about a woman whose husband is accused of child pornography.
“I like films that are a bit crazy, I would say,” Seydoux says when we meet at the festival on Friday. She’s casually seated on a couch, soft-spoken, and sometimes pausing to search for the right words in English.
The Unknown
“Crazy” for Seydoux means bold, out of the box, and challenging. And she delivers no matter how wild of a character or a premise.
Seydoux first broke out with the Palme d’Or winning Blue Is the Warmest Colour in 2013, before starring as Bond girl Madeleine Swann in Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021). She’s continued to work in both French and Hollywood films, including Saint Laurent, The Lobster, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, and Dune: Part Two.
But despite a prolific career, Seydoux admits she never quite felt like an actor, until she shot four films in the span of one year. She went to film The Unknown just two months after having her second child, then jumped to Alpha Gang the day after she wrapped, and then had a couple months before filming Gentle Monster, and then finally filmed The Masque of the Red Death, an A24 movie in which she stars opposite Mikey Madison.
She talks with Vanity Fair about her very busy year, her perspective on fame, and why acting makes her feel like she finally exists.