Carla Bruni

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Carla Bruni
First Lady of France
Incumbent
Assumed office  February 2, 2008
Preceded by	Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
Born	23 December 1967 (1967-12-23) (age 41) Turin, Italy
Birth name	Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi
Nationality	French, Italian
Spouse	Nicolas Sarkozy
Residence	Paris

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy¹ (born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, 23 December 1967) is an Italian-born, naturalized French¹ songwriter, singer, and former model. She is currently the First Lady of France, after marrying French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February 2008.

Early years

Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy, and is heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli (the brand lives on via its former subsidiary in India, founded in 1958)². The family moved to France in 1975³, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s. Bruni grew up in France from age seven and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.

Family

Though she is legally a daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, Bruni-Sarkozy revealed to Vanity Fair in 2008 that her biological father is an Italian, naturalized Brazilian grocery magnate Maurizio Remmert, who, as a young classical guitarist, had a six-year affair with her mother.³ Her sister is actress and movie director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. She also had a brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi (1959 - 4 July 2006), who died from complications of HIV/AIDS.⁴

From her biological father, she has a sister, Consuelo Remmer.⁵

Career

Modeling

Bruni signed with City Models at age 19. Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came across her picture among composite cards of aspiring models and chose her to model with Estelle Lefébure in campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni subsequently worked for designers and fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chanel and Versace.⁶ By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton, then Mick Jagger.⁷ On 11 April 2008, a 1993 nude photograph of Bruni sold at auction for US$91,000 (65,0093 €) — more than 60 times the expected price.⁸

Music

In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion to devote herself to music. She sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc in 1999, based on which he composed seven tracks on his 2000 album Si j'étais elle.

In 2002, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit, produced by ex-lover Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries.⁹ Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa's 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women, the song Le Plus Beau du quartier was used in H&M's Christmas 2006 commercial, and the title track was featured in the 2003 movie Le Divorce.

In 2005, she duetted with Louis Bertignac on the song Les Frôleuses on his new album. In 2006, Bruni recorded Those Little Things an English-language translation of the Serge Gainsbourg song Ces petits riens for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. She took part in the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in a parade paying tribute to the Italian flag.

Her second album, No Promises containing poems by William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, and Christina Rosetti, set to music, was released in January 2007.

Her music career did not cease after becoming the First Lady. She released her third album Comme si de rien n'était (As If Nothing Happened) on 11 July 2008. The songs are self-penned except for one rendition of "You Belong to Me" and another song featuring a poem La Possibilité d'une île by Michel Houellebecq set to music.¹⁰ Royalties from the album will be donated to unidentified charitable and humanitarian cause.¹¹

She is currently working on her fourth album and according to reports will be collaborating with Lenny Kravitz.¹²

Personal life

Relationships

It has been claimed that Bruni was involved with Louis Bertignac, Mick Jagger (Jagger's wife acknowledged his affair with Bruni was a reason for their separation), Eric Clapton, Léos Carax, Charles Berling, Arno Klarsfeld, Vincent Perez¹⁵ and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.¹⁶¹⁷

She has said she is easily "bored with monogamy", and that "love lasts a long time, but burning desire — two to three weeks".¹⁷

The Enthovens

While living with Jean-Paul Enthoven, Bruni fell in love and started an affair with his son, philosophy professor Raphaël Enthoven (the song "Raphäel" from Bruni's album Quelqu'un m'a dit is named after him), who was at the time married to novelist Justine Lévy, daughter of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.¹⁸ Bruni later denied ever having an affair with Raphaël's father in an interview published in Vanity Fair, "I never slept with him, not even a minute."³

The affair and the ending of her marriage were inspiration for Justine's 2004 book Rien de Grave (published in English in 2005 as Nothing Serious). In it, she paints a vitriolic portrait of "Paula", the surgically-enhanced model who steals the protagonist's husband and describes her as "a preying mantis" and "a leech of a woman with a Terminator smile".¹⁹

Bruni and Raphaël had a son, Aurélien, in 2001. The couple broke up in May 2007 because Raphaël thought their relationship did not have a commitment, as she told Vanity Fair.

Marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy

Bruni met recently divorced French president Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2007 at a dinner party.²⁰ After a brief romance they married on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. The marriage is Bruni's first and Sarkozy's third. Bruni obtained French nationality not long afterwards.¹ She has since made contradictory statements as to whether she still holds Italian nationality as well²¹.

First lady of France

Carla Bruni at the 2009 NATO summit, 4 April 2009.

Carla Bruni with Michelle Obama

Following her marriage to Sarkozy, in February 2008, Bruni-Sarkozy continued accompanying him on state visits, including to the United Kingdom in March 2008, which created a sensation in the international press and the public in the UK and France.²²

There was controversy on the eve of the state visit to the UK, with the publication by Christie's auction house of a nude photograph of Bruni taken during her career as a model.²³ The photograph sold for $91,000.²⁴ There was also great interest in Bruni's wardrobe, which was Christian Dior, seen as a diplomatic choice, being a French design house designed by John Galliano, a British designer.²⁵ Another controversy was the use of a popular photo of the French President and Bruni in the print advertising of Ryanair. The couple was awarded damages by a French court²⁶ which they donated to Les Restos du CÅ“ur, an organisation which provides meals to the homeless.

Bruni-Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama in August 2008 at a Buddhist temple on a hill in Languedoc, France.²⁷ Another important event for Bruni was the reception of Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to France in September 2008.²⁸ Bruni visited New York City in September 2008 with her husband, where she attended a meeting on poverty and female mortality with Queen Rania and Wendi Murdoch, met for lunch with First Lady Laura Bush at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Symposium on Advancing Global Literacy and attended the General Assembly in the UN with her husband.²⁹

In December 2008, Bruni sued the makers of a bag featuring a nude shot of the French first lady taken during her supermodelling youth. Clothes designer Pardon has produced 10,000 of the shopping bags emblazoned with the nude photo taken in 1993, showing Bruni staring at the camera with her crossed hands covering her crotch.³⁰

In April 2009, Carla was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos III on the occasion of the couple's Spanish State Visit. ³¹

She has been critical of Pope Benedict XVI on the controversial topic of religion and AIDS. ³²

Discography

Filmography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to category:      Carla Bruni

• Carla Bruni official website
• Carla Bruni at Fashion Model Directory
• Carla Bruni: from catwalk to Elysee — Expatica, 11 February 2008

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