Here’s the Reason Why Lea Seydoux cries as she attends on May 23, 2013 a press conference for the film “Blue is the Warmest Colour”

In the last few years, with her memorable bit parts in Inglourious Basterds, Midnight in Paris, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol — as well as the Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola–directed Prada Candy ads you haven’t seen — Léa Seydoux has only reinforced our current cultural fixation on Frenchwomen, those unfathomably perfect beings who, to believe the cottage industry of Francophilic self-help books, never get fat, raise smarter kids, and have better sex. The 28-year-old looks like a computer-generated amalgam of France’s most beguiling screen beauties, down to her Sophie Marceau pout and the Brigitte Bardot gap in her teeth. Even her publicity campaign for her magisterial new movie, the Cannes Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color (out this weekend in the U.S.), is confoundingly French, in that hot-cold, Je t’aime, moi non plus way: She and her co-star, Adèle Exarchopoulos, have alternately embraced the film and publicly accused its director, Abdellatif Kechiche, of exploiting them.

Unless you live in Idaho, where indecency laws prevent the state’s only arthouse cinema from screening the NC-17 film if it wants to keep its liquor license, you’ll understand why. (Wait… liquor license? Regressive obscenity laws aside, Idaho cinemas sound awesome.) The notoriously long and explicit sex scenes between Seydoux and Exarchopoulos make Last Tango in Paris look like a buttered-up Bambi, and required interminable takes. Seydoux has said she felt like a “prostitute” while shooting them. But they’re also strangely moving: no music or mood lighting or cheesy cross-dissolves or conveniently draped sheets. Just two bodies lost in each other.

As Seydoux prepares to enter the American spotlight wearing nothing but blue hair dye, she speaks to Esquire in Frenglish — a fitting language for her transitional moment — about the film, The Scenes, and her incipient stateside stardom. [Eds. note: Some passages have been translated from French.]

ESQUIRE.COM: Where did you learn English?

LÉA SEYDOUX: I learned in the States. Summer camps. It was in Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C. I went there for a long time, six years.

ESQ: Right now you’re already on every magazine cover in France, in various states of undress. Are you ready for stardom in America?

LS: I was thinking about this today, actually. And I was like, Yeah, it’s funny how I really don’t make the difference. I see that people now recognize me in the street. But it doesn’t change me in the depth of my being.

ESQ: Well here’s one difference. When an American star signs up for a comic-book adaptation, you think The Avengers. When a French woman signs up for a comic-book adaptation, you get a movie about sex, art, love, and social class. Maybe that reflects deep cultural differences, too, if only about comic books.

LS: It’s[Blue Is the Warmest Color]really a loose adaptation of the comic book [by Julie Maroh], though there are similarities. But yes, I think that French cinema tends to be more concerned with social issues and culture, less with entertainment than American cinema. There’s an educational goal. Part of it is that the government funds movies.

ESQ: You’ve said in multiple interviews that you’re cripplingly shy and self-conscious. Is that getting better with time and having shown every inch of your body on the big screen?

LS: I think that I’m shy and I judge myself. But at the same time, I also have big contradictions. I can be sometimes sure of myself as well. I’m not always fragile and vulnerable. I can feel tough and strong. But yeah, I feel that I’m an extremely sensitive person.

ESQ: There’s a heartbreaking clip of you crying at the Cannes press conference. It happens also when the director was saying something nice about you.

LS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. [Gasp] I remember, it was terrible because I felt so embarrassed.

ESQ: What was going through your head?

LS: It was because of the film. Because of what we’ve been through with Adèle, and what I’ve been through, and the fact that the film is now existing. So it was a very emotional moment. It was like… relief that the film was shown to the audience. And of course, because this film was difficult to shoot.

ESQ: You’ve said that you don’t want to do anything like the film again, that you don’t want to work with the director again, but at the same time we’re here talking about it, and you’re clearly very proud of it.

LS: I would love to do another film that requires all my being. But with Kechiche, like, no. Of course I wouldn’t work with him again.

ESQ: Do you think it would have been different with a female director?

LS: No, it’s not the fact that he’s a man and not a woman. That’s not the problem. The thing is, his personality. It’s just that he’s very… eeuhhhhhh… like [makes sucking sound].

ESQ: Not sure what you mean.

LS: Like a vacuum cleaner. He absorbs you. Totally like wooosh. He vacuum cleaned. Because he’s so demanding. It was not the process and the fact that he wanted to do many takes. That was not the problem. The problem was not the fact that he pushed me. When you’re an actress, clearly you want to see your limits. The problem was more between the takes. The fact that you don’t see your friends, that you have no life. That was difficult. But I’m very happy that the film has this success.

ESQ: Have you done a single interview about this movie that didn’t bring up the sex scenes?

LS: Mmm. Not that much.

ESQ: Do you like how slyly I eased into the subject?

LS: Very subtle.

ESQ: Thank you. You’ve said that the amount of violence in American films is more shocking than the sex and nudity in this film. But what do you think sticks in audiences’ minds more? Is it your fight with Paula Patton in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, or the sex scenes in this movie?

LS: The sex, of course, because it’s new. We’re not used to seeing that. Whereas I think that violence… but that fight is not so violent, is it?

ESQ: No, there’s no blood, because you miss her when you throw the vase.

LS: Yes, totally! But yeah, of course, I think the sex scenes are more impressive.

ESQ: Do you think it would have been the same movie without the sex scenes? Would it have been as powerful a film?

LS: Yeah, as powerful, I think. The sex scenes, for me, are not the most powerful scenes.

ESQ: But weren’t they the hardest to shoot?

LS: No, no, they were not. Everything was difficult to shoot, when you do 200 takes.

ESQ: Here at Esquire, we’re very concerned with perceptions of American manhood. Given how fascinated we are with French women, I’d be curious to know what your impressions are of us.

LS: The American man? Exercising a lot. I’ve always felt that Americans are very in the moment. There’s not so much melancholia and mystery, as there is in France. Everything must be understood. Everything must be analyzed.

ESQ: How do we compare to French men?

LS: Well, for example, French guys are often a little feminine in their sensibility, whereas in the U.S. they’re more men. It’s all about performance, whether at sex or on an intellectual level. Actually, even more so on a physical level. There’s this obligation to perform. The same thing applies to women. You see it in magazine covers in the U.S. There’s a provocative approach to sex.

ESQ: You don’t have coverlines like “1,001 ways to drive him wild” in France?

LS: Yes, of course we do, but the sexual subtext is so much stronger in America. There’s an aspect of having to sell sex, even though actresses won’t get naked in movies. Sex is almost clinical, as if it’s under cellophane. It’s all about putting up appearances.

ESQ: And that doesn’t come naturally to you?

LS: At the same time, I like it! I love being in the States became there’s an emphasis on work. People are enthusiastic. They put heart into things. It’s enjoyable. It’s true that as soon as you get back to France people are bitching about everything.