Sarkozy, Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni Sarkozy is a former model and singer and the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. An Italian heiress whose exploits have been media fodder since she was 19 years old, Bruni Sarkozy has become even more of a celebrity since her 2008 marriage to Sarkozy. She was one of the most successful models of the 1990s, reportedly earning more than $7 million annually. Her debut album, Quelqu'un m'a dit (Someone Told Me) sold 2 million copies. However real her accomplishments, her romantic escapades with rock stars, businessmen, and academics made her a focus of media attention-attention that increased when she was first photographed with France's newly divorced president at Disneyland Paris. The international press covered the glamorous couple's courtship, their wedding, and their official travels, commenting on Bruni Sarkozy's style and liberal sexual values. More recently, they have commented as freely on the couple's rumored affairs and troubled marriage.

Carla Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy, on December 23, 1968, into a wealthy industrialist family in which arts were as important as business. The man whom she knew as her father, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, was an accomplished composer; he also ran his family company, CEAT, which manufactured cables and tires. Her mother, Marisa Borini, was a concert pianist. Her biological father was a violinist. When young Carla was 5 years old, the family moved to Paris to escape the threat of kidnapping by a Marxist revolutionary group.

At age 19 years, Bruni Sarkozy signed with a modeling agency and soon became the Guess? Jeans girl, later working with top houses including Christian Dior, Chanel, and Versace. By 1990, she was among the highest-paid models in the world, eventually appearing on 250 covers. Her liaisons with men like Mick Jagger, Donald Trump, and French writer Jean-Paul Enthoven made her the darling of the tabloids. While living with Enthoven, she had an affair with his son-a philosopher 10 years her junior. The affair produced a son, born in 2001.

By 2003, Bruni Sarkozy had begun a second career as a singer. Someone Told Me, her first album, was a critical failure but a commercial success, selling over a million copies in France alone. It stayed on the European Billboard charts for 30 weeks and earned Bruni Sarkozy a nod as best female vocalist at the Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammy Awards, in 2004. Her second album, No Promises, released in early 2007, included songs inspired by poets W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Walter [Page 1277]de la Mare, Christina Rossetti, and others. It was less successful than her first album. By the end of the year, her affair between with Nicolas Sarkozy was attracting far more attention than her music.

First Lady Michelle Obama meets with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of French President Sarkozy at the Palais Rohan (Rohan Palace), April 3, 2009, in Strasbourg, France, in this official White House photo.

The twosome holidayed in the Middle East, with journalists and photographers recording the romance. In January, the French president was dropping hints about a wedding, and on February 2, 2008, French radio announced that Sarkozy and Bruni had wed. The French have strong privacy laws and a sophisticated tolerance for personal scandal, but the growth of American-and British-style celebrity press has meant the new first lady's frankly expressed preference for polygamy received media attention, along with details about her fashion sense.

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