The Cité Du Cinéma, located about six miles north of central Paris, is more city than cinema. A complex of some 700,000 sq ft set up by French director Luc Besson five years ago, it houses not just studios but also a university, devoted to everything from makeup and lighting to cameras, carpentry and costume. There is also a cinema. It's here that Besson - best known for Leon, The Fifth Element and Lucy, the last starring Scarlett Johansson - gathers in late March with his production team and a smattering of students to watch the first full-length trailer of his latest sci-fi epic, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, along with his star, a certain 24-year-old by the name of Cara Delevingne.
Currently, Delevingne - sparrow-small, dressed in Ugg boots and an oversized hoodie that, on her, looks more like a cloak - has stopped everyone from entering, having spotted the neatly lined table of 3-D glasses by the entrance and wanting to take a picture before people disrupt the display. "Hold up! Hold up!"
The film sees Delevingne and co-star Dane DeHaan as special operatives in the 28th century - tasked, naturally, with saving the universe - and the trailer displays the stakes. A CGI phantasmagoria of fantasy worlds and fantastic aliens, it's not hard to imagine where the €197 million budget went and, indeed, the business it'll need to do to earn it back.
After we watch it twice over, Delevingne is giddy, jumping over the bearded Besson like a puppy happy to see its owner. After supporting roles in the likes of Suicide Squad and leads in smaller indies, this is her big shot at jumping that perilous chasm marked "model-turned-actress", turbocharged by being one of the world's most famous faces and a social-media following in the tens of millions (8m on Twitter, 40m on Instagram).
Screening over, we take the lift to Besson's office on the third floor, where he's had the last Rihanna album playing nonstop since it came out (Rihanna has a cameo in the film), and settle down.
"So," says Besson to GQ, with the kind of cultivated laissez faire it's illegal for French film directors not to possess, "last night I saw the questions you sent over, which obviously I didn't read. So, it's me, my questions!"
And with that, we begin...
Luc Besson: So what interests me is when parents realise their daughter or son is good for something and accept it. For me, not only are you very talented, but you're good at almost everything you touch, like music or anything. You're full of skills.
Cara Delevingne: [To GQ] I paid him...
LB: So my first question is when do you realise and accept that you have this talent?
CD: I find it very hard when people pay me compliments because I don't think I'm specifically talented. It's more that I just love doing something. As a kid, I didn't think I was good at anything. I did what I loved, rather than the academic thing. At school, I was surrounded by kids who were incredibly talented, musicians and artists and actors, and I would always think in comparison to these kids I'm terrible.
GQ: You always felt that?
CD: Yeah. As a really small child I always wanted to be an actress. And I wanted to be a musician. But going to school with all these incredibly talented people I was like, "I have no chance." I still did it, because I loved it, but I didn't ever think I'd do this. That's why I'm so happy that I modelled. I wouldn't have made it into acting or music if I hadn't modelled first.
LB: But I can recognise when I see someone like a ball of energy, ready to go pffff! into music, singing, to beatboxing, to pictures, to films, you know? So did your parents think this ball of energy could become something?
**CD: When I was a kid I used to make noise the whole time, like beatboxing before I knew what it was. My parents just found it annoying. My dad called me Whistling Willie. They said they need to put me into something that will release this energy. But they definitely understand how hard it is to make a living in these creative industries. **
LB: Did you feel a kind of pressure being the youngest sibling - because you're the smallest you have to do more?
CD: My sisters were angels to me. I remember the grades they got at school...
GQ: So you still remember that now, what grades they got?
CD: Yeah, in GCSEs and A-levels. It's not that I wanted to do better, I just wanted not to be the stupid kid, or the letdown of the family, so it was really like, "I've got to make these grades." Then I didn't and I felt like such a failure. But it's not a mark of who you are, because you're judged on the fact you can learn something from a piece of paper and write it down again. Some people just don't work like that. I can't.
GQ: Luc, what was your impression of Cara?
LB: Well, my first thing was to check she's real.
CD: Fair enough.
LB: Because, you know, you hear things: she's a model, she wants to make films. So my first thing was, "Do you really want to be an actress? Since when? Where does it come from? Is it real?" Because you cannot afford a part like this to go to someone who just wants to have fun for a couple of weeks, you know? The first meeting she was by herself. She was on time and she had no make-up. And just these three points for me, it was like, "Oh, OK. So she's serious." OK, I have more questions.
**CD: Oh, no, please don't. This is so weird... **
LB: Do you remember the first person who trusted your ability to do things?
CD: Um, there have been stages of it, but it happened first in modelling. I worked in modelling for a year before I ever got a high fashion job. And I was working at Asos five days a week, doing catalogue stuff, and I met [Burberry's] Christopher Bailey and instead of just looking at me and saying, "No, you're too short," or, "No, you don't look right," he said, "What do you want to do? What are your passions? What makes you wake up in the morning?" And I was like, "What?" He actually wanted to know what drove me, and the first big campaign I got was Burberry.
GQ: And what about music?
CD: In music, Pharrell [Williams] was one of the people who made me think I could even attempt to do music.
GQ: Do you remember what he said?
CD: Again, I met him through modelling. We were doing a Vogue shoot together and we were eating McDonald's. I was just chatting about music and I would kind of be sitting there beatboxing and drumming away and he was like, "I want you to come to my hotel room tonight - and bring your guitar." I was like, "What? That would be so weird." I went, and he had all his amazing team, and he was like, "Sing a song."
GQ: No pressure...
**CD: He could see it in my face, thinking I can't do this and he was like, "Look, just close your eyes, remember what it feels like to sing in the shower and just enjoy it." And I did. I sang [George Gershwin's] "Summertime". So I feel like I've had really amazing mentors along the way. **
GQ: Luc, you're known for strong leading ladies, from Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element to Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, do you see elements of either in Cara?
LB: I'm actually fighting against this idea, because I think I just pay the same attention to female and male.
GQ: But the fact is a lot of people don't. That you do sets you apart.
LB: It's true that in recent history, the last 50 years in cinema, it was about the man and the girl is crying on the balcony. I always thought that it was unfair. At some point, in Valerian, my big fear was that I cannot choose one [lead actor] without the other. Then when I met Dane DeHaan, I said, "OK, but I want to see them together." So I was preparing a plan to have Cara meet Dane and to be there and to see the electricity. I was prepping the exact conditions, how to do it, then Cara called me and said, "I saw Dane last night!" Oh, f***! I was so frustrated! So I was calling her and him: "How was it? How do you feel?"
**CD: And that's the interesting thing, because me and Dane are so different. Like, completely different. But we get on. I would never have put us together. **
GQ: In what ways are you different?
CD: Well, he's an incredibly dedicated and serious actor who's never been to a club before. And I'm kind of the opposite. Obviously I love what I do and work very hard, but I learnt so much from him.
GQ: Did anything from you rub off on him?
CD: I really think it did. There were a couple of moments on set [where] we'd be laughing a lot and Dane was like, "I never have fun on set."
LB: OK, I have a question for you. Maybe you don't want to answer it but still...
CD: I will try.
LB: For me, you look so free. You don't fear trying things, like a stunt. Or if you f*** up a line, you don't care, you do it again. You're open, free, no problem. And at the same time sometimes your skin shows an anxiety inside.
**CD: That's a great question, Luc. Jesus! So to explain a bit more, I have psoriasis, and during this film especially my skin was really bad. And in the last weeks we had this bikini shot. The closer it got the worse my skin was getting. I am a very outwardly free person, even though sometimes I don't feel that way inside. The way I view the world is... there are so many rules. I see the world like a box and a maze, and in everything I've ever done, people have been like, "This is the way it's got to be." And I've always been, like, "Bhaaaaah! Break all the rules! Smash all the things down!" But obviously if I felt like that inside, I would be crazy. I would have nothing grounded. Inside, I have so many fears. I work in an industry where I care what other people think and I'm nervous all the time. If I don't admit that it's going on, it comes out in my skin... You pretend it doesn't exist, that's when it comes out, whether it's heartbreak or something at work. You know, it's hard for me to cry. But you have to release it, so that was my body's way of releasing bad feelings. **
GQ: So was there a scene where you had to cry and that was difficult for you?
CD: It's very hard and I find it so difficult... I don't know why.
LB: No, it was not hard...
**CD: It was hard! **
LB: No, it was not. She was blocking herself off. Some people can't cry because they are dry inside. You can show her a picture of a puppy dog and she'll start crying. But to let it go, in front of a camera with people...
CD: I find it hard to cry in front of even one person. If I cry, I want to cry alone. For me, to cry meant I had to, in my head, beat myself up and make myself feel really shit, but what I learnt that day was I actually had to be strong to be vulnerable.
GQ: Are you getting better about not bottling things up?
CD: Well, this is the thing. Once you've dealt with one thing that's happened in your life, something worse comes along. But I think I'm getting better at it.
LB: I noticed also, before we started, that you were... I don't know if it was yoga [but] I can feel the difference when you do it.
CD: Yeah, I do yoga every morning. But when I stopped the film, I stopped doing yoga. I always have a problem when I finish films. For six months you create this family, you get so close, it's like a home, and then suddenly it's over and my abandonment issues go through the roof.
GQ: It's like the end of a relationship.
**CD: Yeah, it's like the end of a relationship. And also, I'd been given a part where I play this stable, together person. Then you're not that person anymore and you're like, "Who am I?" I'm suddenly hit with this identity crisis and then abandoned and then everything. When I finish films, I have to spend months picking myself up. **
GQ: So is yoga something you do to balance yourself now?
CD: I started doing it, like, four, five years ago. When I started is when I first broke into acting.
GQ: What did it do for you?
CD: I had no... I didn't feel anything. I think I would have turned into a sociopath if I hadn't started yoga. I had no contact with my emotions at all. It was really crazy, because, honestly, I remember meeting my yoga tutor for the first time and crying for the first time in years. I felt blind before. Now, every year I go away to Thailand to a yoga retreat for a week and even before I signed on to the film I was like, "You have to let me go to this yoga retreat." I mean, it's one of the biggest budget productions, and Luc was like, "Yeah. If it's going to help you, you should go."
LB: Hoping it would be in Switzerland! It wasn't the yoga that bothered me, it was the distance!
GQ: So, if you don't do it for a few days...
**CD: Bad things start to happen. I make bad decisions. It's weird. It's really weird! **
LB: I have one last question... So, for me, you really...
CD: Smell?
LB: You're a person of the world. You know every kind of person, you go in every part of the world. So when you're so global like this, what do you think makes you English?
CD: My ability to drink alcohol... No, I'm joking. I'm joking!
LB: That's French too, don't worry.
**CD: I think my constantly saying sorry. My father taught me that manners get you far. Um, my ability to be in any weather and be happy about it? [Laughs.] Also, I think, my thing is just to get on with it, no matter what, no matter if you're neck high in mud and everything is going wrong. So you're like, "Well, onwards and upwards, like, stiff upper lip. Get on with it." While remembering that I still need to cry... **
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is out on 4 August
Photographs by: Mariano Vivanco Creative direction: Paul Solomons Styling by: Teddy Czopp Hair: Olivier Schawalder at Atomo Makeup: Sabrina Bedrani Manicurist: Chloé Desmarchelier at Atomo Fashion assistant: Maya Pambaguian Photography assistants: Scott Archibald; Paul Jedwab; Pablo Freda Digital technician: Halldora Magnusdottir Set designer: Samirha Salmi at The Magnet Agency Clothing: Vintage Manfred Thierry Mugler
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