Lea’s back in Bond 25 to prove her role was no Swann song

FOR your eyes only . . . Lea Seydoux is back in the next James Bond adventure. The 33-year-old Parisian, who played psychiatrist Dr Madeleine Swann in Spectre three years ago, will feature in Bond 25, which begins filming in the spring. Bond star Daniel Craig wanted her back — and so did film-maker Cary Joji Fukunaga, who will be directing his first Bond picture. Fukunaga told me exclusively that ‘Lea will be returning’; as will regulars Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris. The director praised the Bond Brit pack — and British thespians in general — noting that he has worked with many on past projects, including Beasts Of No Nation and Jane Eyre. ‘You have some of the best actors in the world here,’ he said. ‘Why wouldn’t I have the best coming back?!’ In Spectre, Ms Seydoux was to be found working at a private clinic nestled in the Austrian Alps. She and James Bond bonded between the sheets, and at various other exotic locations.

The 24th official Bond film, based on Ian Fleming’s character, was released two years before the #MeToo campaign hit Hollywood. So I’ll be fascinated to see what tone the new screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (with major input from Fukunaga) sets, in terms of how women are treated on screen.

I mean, is one even allowed to refer to the actresses who appear in the 007 pictures as ‘Bond Girls’ any more?

I discussed the topic with Rosamund Pike, who was in Die Another Day (and was nominated for a Golden Globe yesterday for her portrait of war correspondent Marie Colvin in A Private War). And she told me that she quite liked being referred to as a ‘Bond Girl’.

But it will be more about how Craig’s Bond, whom Fleming described as a ‘blunt instrument wielded by a government department’, treats the women in the picture, whether it’s Ms Seydoux (who was also in Blue Is The Warmest Colour) or any of the other actresses to be cast in the as yet untitled picture.

Whatever producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson decide to call the movie, Bond 25 is due to hit cinemas on February 14, 2020.