| “ | Why, given every other possible option, does a man choose the life of a paid assassin? | „ |
| ~ Madeline to James Bond. |
| “ | She has your eyes. | „ |
| ~ Madeleine's parting words to James Bond about their daughter |
Dr. Madeleine Swann is the deuteragonist of the 2015 film, Spectre and its 2021 sequel, No Time To Die. She is a French psychologist originally affiliated with the Austrian Hoffler Klinik organization. She is also the daughter of the mysterious SPECTRE member Mr. White and the lover of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) operative James Bond.
Madeleine Swann is portrayed by Léa Seydoux.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Madeleine is the daughter of SPECTRE agent Mr. White and his wife.
In 1998, Lyutsifer Safin came to the White house in Nittedal, Norway to kill Mr. White, who had murdered his entire family on orders from SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He found only a young Madeleine and her mother, Madeleine heard Safin murder her mother and hid under her bed as he turned his attention towards her. Madeleine, knowing that her father kept a pistol hidden in a cupboard, got the gun and blindly shot Safin, breaking his mask.
Madeline then dragged Safin's body out of the house, but before she could dispose of it, Safin reawakened and restarted his pursuit of her, forcing her onto a frozen lake. The ice cracked beneath her feet and she fell in. However, Safin took pity on her and shot the ice before pulling her to the surface. He left soon after.
Madeleine grew estranged from her father, whom she blamed for her mother's death. She ran away from him to live with her mother's relatives in Paris and severed all contact with him. Madeleine also disliked guns. She later became a psychologist, working for two years with Medecins sans frontiers, before she went to work at the Hoffler clinic near Sölden in the Austrian Alps.
Spectre[]
Bond first meets Madeleine at the clinic, a terminally ill Mr. White having told him she would lead him to the leader of SPECTRE just before committing suicide. She receives the news of her father's death with an apparent coldness that surprises even Bond, and denies knowing anyone who worked with Mr. White.
Moments later, SPECTRE assassin Mr. Hinx kidnaps her, and Bond gives chase to rescue her. After crashing Hinx's car, Bond and Madeleine go on the run. They meet with Q, who analyzes a ring that Bond took from SPECTRE member Marco Sciarra before killing him, and finds information stored within it linking SPECTRE to Bond's late nemeses Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene, and Raoul Silva. Madeleine then tells them that SPECTRE's leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, can be found at an eco-hotel in Morocco, where her father had always stayed.
Madeleine and Bond travel to Morocco, and she tells him about her troubled relationship with her father. Bond tells her that, for all his faults, her father had tried to save her life. Upset by this revelation Madeleine has too much to drink and goes to sleep, threatening to kill Bond if he touches her. The next day, they board a train to Tangiers, but are attacked by Mr. Hinx; Madeline fires several rounds from Bond's pistol at Hinx before Bond kills him. Madeleine then has sex with Bond.
They go to Blofeld's base in the desert, meeting with Blofeld himself. Blofeld - Bond's former foster brother, who has always hated Bond for being his father's favorite - explains his plan to steal the entire world's intelligence data, gloats about causing him so much pain over the years, and then causes a rift in his relationship with Madeleine by showing her footage of her father's suicide, which Bond did nothing to stop. She watches helplessly as Blofeld straps Bond to a mechanical chair designed to surgically remove his eyes, and blurts out that she loves him. Bond then destroys the chair with an exploding watch designed by Q, which also disfigures Blofeld, who nevertheless escapes.
Blofeld later kidnaps Madeleine and Bond and holds them prisoner in the ruins of the old MI-6 headquarters, which are set to be demolished in a matter of minutes. Blofeld tells Bond he can either die trying to save Madeleine or leave her to die while he escapes. Bond ultimately saves Madeleine, however, and apprehends Blofeld. Bond then retires from MI-6, and drives off into the sunset with Madeleine.
No Time to Die[]
A year later, Madeleine and Bond are living together in Matera, Italy. Madeleine convinces Bond to visit the grave of his long-dead lover Vesper Lynd in order to get closure. At the grave site, however, Bond is attacked by assassins apparently working for SPECTRE, and Bond accuses Madeleine of setting him up, a suspicion strengthened by a voicemail on Madeleine's phone from the imprisoned Blofeld. Madeleine pleads innocence, but Bond does not believe her; he tells her they will never see each other again and puts her on a train out of Matera.
Five years later, Madeleine is living and working in Norway with her five-year-old daughter Mathilde, who, unbeknownst to Bond, is his child. One day, she meets with a new patient, who reveals himself as none other than Safin. He threatens to kill Bond unless she helps him kill Blofeld using Project Heracles, a bioweapon that uses nanobots that infect like a virus upon touch and kill the target and anyone else who shares their DNA. Madeleine reluctantly agrees to help, and put a nanobot with Blofeld's DNA on her hand, and sets up a meeting with the terrorist mastermind in his cell in Belmarsh Prison.
During the meeting, she unexpectedly runs into Bond, who has come out of retirement to help MI-6 stop SPECTRE from using the Heracles nanobots to kill millions of people. Bond awkwardly offers her his hand, but she refuses to shake it, not wanting to poison Bond, but he misinterprets this as rudeness. Madeleine leaves, but accidentally brushes against his hand, infecting him. Blofeld talks with Blofeld alone, and Blofeld tells him that Madeleine had nothing to do with the attack on him in Matera, and that he left her the message in order to ruin their relationship as part of his continuing vendetta against his former foster brother. Enraged, Bond tries to choke Blofeld, unknowingly passing on the nanobots, which kill Blofeld instantly.
Bond realizes that Safin, not Blofeld, is behind the Heracles plot, and goes to Madeleine's home in Norway to apologize for not trusting her. She acknowledges that neither of them are "built to trust". Just as they are about to kiss, however, Mathilde interrupts them. Madeleine says that Mathilde is not his child, not wanting to get her involved. They then go on the run, with Mathilde in tow, from Safin's henchmen. Madeleine manages to help him kill several of Safin's thugs, but they ultimately kidnap both her and Mathilde.
Safin's men take her and Mathilde to his island base, which is covered in toxic plants. Safin offers Madeleine tea, but she recognizes its aroma as originating from a toxin that causes blindness, and refuses. She then throws it at Safin's right-hand man Primo, temporarily blinding him, and rendezvouses with Bond, who kisses her before helping her and Mathilde escape on a lifeboat.
Soon afterward, Bond contacts her via radio, and tells her that he will not be able to make it off the island before the missiles launched at it by MI6 destroy Safin's facility. When Madeleine demands to know why, Bond tells her that, before Bond killed him, Safin poisoned him with the nanobots, meaning that he would always pose a danger to Mathilde, whom he instinctively knows is his daughter. He tells her that he loves her, and she tearfully tells Bond that she loves him, too, while indirectly revealing that Mathilde is his child by saying, "She has your eyes." Before he is killed, Bond replies, "I know."
After Bond's death, Madeleine travels to Matera with Mathilde and tells her the story of her father - "His name was Bond. James Bond."
Personality[]
As a psychiatrist and Mr. White's daughter, Madeleine is a strong, rebellious and resourceful woman. She was able to hide and evade SPECTRE members, with the Hoffler Clinic providing a perfect hiding place. But Madeleine was still traumatized by her past and that of her father, as evidenced by her perpetual hatred of weapons and the originally aggressive behavior she exhibited at the beginning of her relationship with Bond.
Despite this, Madeleine's abilities and indirect connection to SPECTRE have made her a safe and effective ally for Bond. Moreover, her courage and fearlessness are; such that; she was able to briefly resume handling a gun to save 007 from Mr. Hinx.
Relationships[]
Mr. White[]
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Mrs. White[]
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James Bond[]
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Mathilde Swann[]
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Lyutsifer Safin[]
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Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Madeleine is the first blonde leading female character in a Bond film since Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights.
- It is interesting to notice that, Léa Seydoux being French, the names "Madeleine" and "Swann" are probably references to Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu; the madeleine is an important element in the first book, called "Du côté de chez Swann".
- Madeleine is the first Bond girl to appear and play a major role in more than one film.
- Madeleine is also the first woman with whom Bond truly fell in love and who survived all of her appearances. The other two women with whom Bond fell in love, Tracy Bond and Vesper Lynd, were both killed at the end of their respective movies.
- While a minor role, Léa Seydoux portrayed Charlotte LaPadite in Inglourious Basterds, which also featured Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa, who co-starred with her again as Ernst Starvo Blofeld in Spectre and No Time To Die.
