She began her acting career with her film debut in Girlfriends with early roles in The Last Mistress and On War Seydoux has also worked as a model. Since , she has been a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton. Seydoux's parents are both partly of Alsatian descent. Her father is a great-grandson of businessman and inventor Marcel Schlumberger , while her mother is a granddaughter of Marcel's brother, Maurice Schlumberger.
She instead wanted to be an opera singer, [ 13 ] [ 26 ] studying music at the Conservatoire de Paris. Seydoux's parents divorced when she was three years old and they were often away, [ 24 ] her mother in Africa and her father on business, which, combined with her large family, meant that she "felt lost in the crowd I was very lonely as a kid.
Really I always had the feeling I was an orphan. Nor have I asked for anything, ever. Seydoux once worked as a model for their jewellery line Jokko. Seydoux describes her youthful self as short-haired, slightly dishevelled, and widely viewed as a bit strange: "People liked me, but I always felt like a misfit. Seydoux has stated that as a child she wanted to become an opera singer, studying music at the Conservatoire de Paris , but eventually her shyness compelled her to drop the idea.
The following year, Seydoux played her first major screen role as one of the main characters in Sylvie Ayme's Girlfriends Mes copines. In these years, she also did her first work as a model for American Apparel , posing for their Pantytime campaign, [ 39 ] and had a role in the films 13 French Street and The Last Mistress.
In , she had a major part in Jessica Hausner 's Lourdes , [ 32 ] and a small role in her first Hollywood film, Quentin Tarantino 's Inglourious Basterds. It was totally against my nature. I worked hard, but Lisbeth was almost anorexic.
