SPECTRE: Meet The New Bond Girls Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci

Though already rumoured, the new Bond girls for the 24th 007 movie ‘SPECTRE’ are now confirmed as French actress Léa Seydoux and Italian screen siren Monica Bellucci.

Seydoux’s role in the movie was called last month by Bond authority Baz Bamigboye in the Daily Mail, who named the emerging star as one of the film’s leading ladies.

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Meanwhile, Deadline hooked on to talk of Bellucci joining the cast earlier this week.

Both reports were indeed bang on the money, as Bellucci takes on the role of Lucia Sciarra, and Seydoux as Madeleine Swann, as announced by director Sam Mendes at the press event at Pinewood Studios.

Seydoux burst onto the international stage thanks to her incendiary performance in the controversial drama ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’, in which she played Emma, a young gay woman who embarks on a relationship with a girl about to leave high school.

The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, only the second time that the coveted gong had been awarded to both the film’s director, Abdellatif Kechiche, and the two lead actresses, Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

From sterling movie stock, her grandfather is Jérôme Seydoux, the chairman of film company Pathe, while her grand uncle Nicolas runs French film studio Gaumont.

Having first appeared on screen in 2006, the 29-year-old has also appeared in ‘Inglorious Basterds’, Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight In Paris’, ‘Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ and ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.

Bellucci, meanwhile, has been a venerable screen star since the 1990s, often compared to the sirens of Italian cinema, like Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

She cemented her career in the stylish drama ‘L’Appartement’ in 1996, on the set of which she met her husband Vincent Cassel (the pair separated last year).

The 50-year-old actress has since appeared in a raft of both Hollywood movies and edgy European art house, including ‘The Passion of the Christ’, ‘The Brothers Grimm’, ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ and the devastating ‘Irreversible’.

Both Bellucci and Seydoux appear to be perfect casting choices for ‘SPECTRE’, which was announced this morning at Pinewood on the famous 007 stage.

The movie, filming in Bellucci’s native Italy, London, Mexico City, Morocco and Austria, is due out on November 6, 2015.

Also new to the cast are Christoph Waltz, Dave Bautista and ‘Sherlock’s Andrew Scott.

Reprising roles are Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Ralph Fiennes and, of course, Daniel Craig as James Bond.

Image credits: Rex Features

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