French actresses Léa Seydoux can easily take on studio movies like the James Bind “Spectre” or “Dune: Part Two,” and also explore complex character roles in no less than 11 Cannes Fest entries over two decades.

This year she stars in two Cannes films, Arthur Harari’s The Unknown, and “Corsage” director Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster.

In “The Unknown,” based on Harari’s graphic novel, Seydoux plays a man trapped in a woman’s body, who tries to find out how an act of drug-infused party sex transformed him. And in “Gentle Monster,” Seydoux starts out as a happily married pop singer who is jarred to learn that her seemingly loving husband is a pedophile. She has no idea what kind, or how he may have acted with her young son. Was he a documentary filmmaker doing research, or selling child porn for money? Did he act on his impulses with young children? The once complacently happy woman begins to unravel layers of the “gentle monster.”

Seydoux has been coming to Cannes since she acted in a short some 20 years ago. Her breakout moment was 2013’s Blue is the Warmest Color, when she was 28. The movie won the Palme d’Or not only for its director Abdellatif Kechiche but for Seydoux and her onscreen lover, 19-year-old rookie costar Adèle Exarchopoulos. “It was such a big deal, it was amazing. It touched so many people, not only the critics. It was also the first time that I was doing a movie that had strong political meaning.”

After “Blue,” Seydoux made a crucial decision to have “the final approval for every scene where my body is seen, to have greater control over what I want to show.”

Since “Blue,” Seydoux has worked steadily with directors in France and Hollywood, from Wes Anderson (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”) to Mia Hansen-Løve (“One Fine Morning”).

At 40, Lea Seydoux is France’s busiest, most diverse, and most acclaimed actor of her generation.

“I gain a certain confidence doing this job for more than 20 years. I like to adapt myself. because I’ve worked with so many different directors that have such different styles.”

The Unknown demanded that she speak three languages: French, English, and German. “On certain films, you have to adapt your style of acting.  Some movies you internalize things, others you have to be almost out there, externalized. These two Cannes films are both internalized. They are different, but they have similarities. Both characters have a secret, something they can’t tell, and they have to live with the shame of this secret. Marie’s film has social subject matter, while Arthur’s is more philosophical, existential, metaphysical.”

The Unknown was shot two months after she gave birth to her second child, but she fearlessly insisted on showing her fleshy, chesty postpartum body without vanity.

“It’s the first time I was able to explore my body in a way that I’ve never experienced before. Most of the time, the bodies we see onscreen are sexualized or objectified, even though it’s changing now. But this was the first time that I had the possibility to explore my body in a different way and not seen through that angle.”

When she first saw The Unknown, it hit her hard. “I thought it was brave, it’s important to show a body that we can relate to. I’m tired of seeing these bodies on screen that are completely controlled, bodies that are not real. There is  beauty in the truthfulness of the body I had at the time. Even though it was not comfortable to show myself that way, I thought it was important and necessary.”

Scenes without words

Many shots in The Unknown are without any dialogue. “I love to express things without words,” which is also the case of Gentle Monster, which Kreutzer tells through the eyes of a woman who doesn’t know what’s going on. “I can discover the story as it unfolds, through her perspective, and she has to face different emotions. She doesn’t want to be in denial. I had to express so many contradictory feelings.”

For the first time, Seydoux gets to show off her offscreen love of singing. To that extent, she worked closely with Camille Ducol, who won the Best Song Oscar for “Emilia Pérez.”

Having played a psychologist, Dr. Madeleine Swann, in two Bond films, “Spectre” and “No Time to Die,” Seydoux is thrilled that director Denis Villeneuve is taking the helm of the next Bond. “I would love it to be real cinema, because I was sad when I heard that they sold their franchise, but they made good artistic choice. I said to Denis, ‘For me, you are the cinema.’”

Seydoux has two American indies. First, the sophomore feature of Charlie Polinger, The Masque of the Red Death, co-starring Anora Oscar-winner Mikey Madison, who she admires.

Seydoux is also starring in the Zellner brothers’ movie, Alpha Gang, a sci-fi ensemble comedy.

Her Motto:

“I will always go towards my fear. I’m attracted to, this uncomfortable zone.”