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Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, 23 December 1967) is an Italian-born, naturalized French^[1] songwriter, singer and former model. Since February 2008, she has been the third wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She held Italian citizenship until mid 2008.

Biography

Heiress to the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi that was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli (the brand lives on via its former subsidiary in India, founded in 1958),^[2] she was born in Turin, Italy. The family moved to France in 1973, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s. Carla grew up in France from age five and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She returned 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, who also resides in Paris. She also had a brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi (1959 - 4 July 2006), who died of complications of HIV/AIDS.

Career

Modeling

Bruni signed with City Models at 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.^[4] 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.^[5] On Friday, 11 April 2008, it was confirmed that a 1993 nude photograph of Bruni had been auctioned for US$91,000 (£46,098) - more than 60 times the expected price.^[6]

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.^[7] 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.

In 2005, she was a guest in Louis Bertignac's return album on the song Les frôleuses which they sang as a duet.

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 participated 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 Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, and Christina Rosetti, set to music, was released in January 2007.

Her albums are released by the French independent record label Naïve, which releases artists such as Vinicius Cantuaria and Aline de Lima.

Her music career still 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 by Michel Houellebecq set to music.^[8] Royalties from the album will be donated to unidentified charitable and humanitarian cause.^[9]

Personal life

Relationships

It has been claimed that Carla 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 Perez^[12] and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.^[13][14]

She has said she is easily "bored with monogamy", and that "love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks".^[14]

The Enthovens

While living with Jean-Paul Enthoven, Bruni fell in love and started an affair with his son, philosophy professor Raphaël Enthoven (track 2, Raphäel, of Carla'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.^[15] 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 Lévy's book Rien de grave (Nothing Serious), published in 2004. In it, Lévy paints a vitriolic portrait of "Paula", the female who steals the protagonist's husband, as "a preying mantis" with "a Terminator smile".^[16]

Bruni and Raphaël Enthoven had a son, Aurélien, in 2001.

Marriage with Nicolas Sarkozy

Bruni met recently divorced French president Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2007 at a dinner party.^[17] 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 and abandoned her Italian one the next summer.^[18]

First lady of France^[19]

Following her marriage to Sarkozy, in February 2008, Carla 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.^[20]
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.^[21] This photograph sold for $91,000.^[22] 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.^[23]
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 court^[24] which they donated to Les Restos du Cœur, an organisation which provides meals to the homeless.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has met the Dalai Lama in August of 2008 at a Buddhist temple on a hill in Languedoc, France.^[25] Other important event for Carla was the reception of the Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to France in September of 2008.^[26] Carla visited New York 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. ^[27]

Discography

References

External links

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