Léonie Cassel, 16 years old: “I inherited my mother’s quest for harmony, my father’s adventurous spirit and Deva’s straightforward frankness”

Sitting at the small round table in a Parisian hotel bar, Léonie Cassel stands straight like a schoolgirl on the first day of the school year. Her endless legs unfold under her baggy jeans and her dancer’s feet arch in pretty black ballerinas. Her face has the luminous beauty and warm colors of her mother’s Italy – “I was born in Rome, under the sun”, she explains. Léonie cannot deny her origins: she is indeed the youngest daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. A mixture of gentleness and temperament, of daring and demanding, under a cascade of brown hair. Her older sister, Deva, a 21-year-old model and actress, brilliantly follows in her parents’ footsteps. In turn, a few days after celebrating her 16th birthday (she was born on May 20), Léonie agreed to pose for this fashion shoot and to be interviewed for the second time in her life. Almost at the same age when his mother, Monica Bellucci – who accompanied him to this interview – took her first steps in fashion as a model.

A studious student, in the second year of a Parisian high school, attracted by literary subjects and in particular philosophy, Léonie leads a normal life as a teenager of her age. “I’m a real electric battery that has trouble staying put,” she warns, laughing. “I inherited my mother’s quest for harmony, my father’s adventurous spirit and Deva’s straightforward frankness. My big sister is my role model and my best friend,” she adds while Monica Bellucci disappears into a small adjoining living room: “I don’t want to disrupt the interview,” slips the Italian actress in a velvety voice, beyond her sculptural beauty, what immediately strikes you about Léonie is this verve and this mischievous air which constantly crosses her eyes. Cosmopolitan, the young girl already speaks five languages (French, Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese). Growing up in a multicultural mix and describes her childhood as a series of epiphanies, she remembers the first memorable film shoots she attended: “When I was 5 years old, Deva and I accompanied our mother to Serbia on the set of. On the Milky Roadby Emir Kusturica. I remember my mother in a wedding dress, surrounded by cats, in the middle of a field.”

I like dreamlike universes, the strange, the disturbing

Léonie Cassel

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At 8 years old, she was an extra in Vidocqwhile his father plays the leading role in the film. “I played a little village girl, I loved interacting with the cast and crew.” If it sometimes seemed strange to her to hear her mother talking to herself in the kitchen – “I understood later that she was rehearsing a role,” she says with a laugh – everything was an excuse to feed his overflowing imagination. When she was younger, Léonie developed a love for cinema and directors like Sofia Coppola and Tim Burton, who rocked her childhood. “I like dreamlike worlds, the strange, the disturbing. I love arthouse horror films, like Hérédité et Midsummerby Ari Aster.” Her taste for aesthetics was formed by watching her mother slip into gala dresses and by discovering the fashion professions at exhibitions and fashion shows. “When I was 9 years old, I attended a Dolce & Gabbana haute couture show in Venice: a real spectacle where dresses made of stapled toys and trains created a fantastic narrative thread.”

Storytelling and art are at the heart of everything that moves Léonie: she has taken theater lessons, practiced dance and studied piano since her early childhood. She takes singing lessons and composes songs, on the guitar or on the computer, which she keeps to herself for the moment. “My parents protected me from the public eye and taught me to take the time.” A child of Generation Z, Léonie has a TikTok and Instagram account, but rarely posts and does not intend to devote much time to it. “For the moment, I love my life as a high school student. I have always had this passion for cinema, art, and music. fashion, music: I would like to become an actress one day. In the meantime, I want to discover modeling work. The way you dress reflects a person’s identity and clothes are a beautiful way to express yourself, to play, to be free.