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Published Nov 02, 2025 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 4 minute read
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SUPERMODEL TURNED FIRST LADY: Fun-loving Carla Bruni is an admitted maneater. Now her hubby is in prison. GETTY IMAGESArticle content
Former supermodel Carla Bruni is the French first lady from central casting.
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She’s stunning, she sings, and she has revelled in her jet set life, swanning past the planet’s literal and figurative velvet rope.
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But mon dieu! Madam, 57, is now facing woes that are leaving a sour taste in her mouth like a bad slice of brie. High society could soon be replaced by a life more akin to the hoi polloi.
Bruni’s beloved hubby, former French president Nicolas “Sarko” Sarkozy, 70, has just handed a five-year jail sentence at La Santé, France’s most infamous prison. Sarkozy was convicted of conspiring to raise campaign funds from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy (C), with his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, leaves his residence to present himself to La Sante Prison for incarceration on a five-year prison sentence on October 21, 2025. Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA /AFP
Le scandale is now inching closer to Bruni, who is also under investigation for witness tampering and being part of a wider criminal conspiracy. She denies wrongdoing.
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While Bruni is an exotic beauty, Sarkozy most certainly is not. But late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld found many similarities between the two.
“They are hunters who met — predators,” he told Vanity Fair for a Bruni profile. “He had seduced many women, and she was a kind of seductress.”
BORN RICH
Born into wealth in Turin as the heiress to an Italian rubber company (it was later revealed she was the product of her mother’s torrid affair), she attended a posh Swiss finishing school. Initially, she planned to study architecture in Paris.
Her family had moved to the French capital during the 1970s when Italy was plagued by bombings and kidnappings committed by the Marxist–Leninist Red Brigade.
But architecture never became a thing. Instead, Bruni entered the constellation of stars known as Planet Supermodel. She became one of the highest-paid models on the planet, gracing around 250 magazine covers and earning about $8.7 million per year.
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Carla Bruni walks the runway for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024 on October 15, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris /Getty Images
And at the height of her runway fame, she quit to become a pop star. She has sold millions of albums in France, but like many of that nation’s stars, has gone nowhere on this side of the pond.
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Still, rock and roll agreed with her. She had a torrid affair with Mick Jagger after they were introduced by Eric Clapton, whom she also dated. Jagger was married to leggy Texan, Jerry Hall, at the time and was not impressed by Bruni.
‘I PREFER POLYGAMY’
When Hall found out about the affair, she demanded that the exotic stunner break things off. Bruni ignored her and arranged for a tryst with the Stones’ frontman in Las Vegas.
BRUNI EX-BEAU: Mick Jagger at his birthday party July 2023. Photo by Getty /Bang Showbiz
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Sarkozi isn’t Bruni’s first politician or political high roller. Former socialist French prime minister Laurent Fabius is also a notch on her bed post. She dumped a French author for his philosopher son and became pregnant by him.
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And then came the blowback. A scathing fictional account of the affair painted the Italian heiress as a cold, cunning maneater.
‘TAMER OF MEN’
“With regards to men, it’s not love that drives her — it’s something else, but definitely not love,” one French celebrity who knew her exes told the Guardian in 2007.
Bruni sees herself differently, admitting to having 15 sex partners before hooking up with Sarkozi.
“I am a tamer of men, a cat, an Italian,” she told Le Figaro in 2007. “Monogamy bores me terribly … I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry [its female equivalent].”
‘PRESIDENT BLING-BLING’
Friends say she finally met her match with Sarkozy. First introduced to one another at a dinner in 2007, his divorce had recently wrapped and the hedonistic couple were engaged within months. While she may have parked her torrid sexual encounters, she lost none of her ardour for luxury.
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Sarkozy’s spending earned him the mocking title “le Président Bling-Bling” in the media. So, he threw Bruni a wild 40th birthday bash where he gifted her a $34,000 Dior ring with a pink diamond in the shape of a heart.
Even the Élysée Palace wasn’t good enough for Bruni during Sarkozy’s presidency. Most of the time, the couple lived in a beautifully appointed mansion that Bruni had rented in a gated community in west Paris.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy looks on during a ceremony held to award Mayor of Calais as Knight of the Legion of Honour in the city hall in Calais, France, Sept. 22, 2021. Photo by FRANCOIS LO PRESTI /AFP via Getty Images
Still, despite their trials and tribulations, Bruni has kept calm and continued to revel in her luxurious life even after Sarkozy lost the election in 2012 and the legal proceedings that have dogged them. She still attends Paris Fashion Week (as she did last month).
These days, Bruni still models (most recently for Victoria’s Secret) and has become a vintner of fine rose. Bruni and her now caged hubby own 750 acres of vineyards in Provence, complete with an 18th-century castle. Bruni also still makes music and is learning pole dancing.
“The castle itself is a magic place, full of incredible energy. It’s like my version of the Garden of Eden,” Bruni gushed to Vogue in 2024.
One thing Carla Bruni will not need to worry about is money. She was born rich and made tens of millions modelling.
But life without Sarkozy? Her biographer believes Bruni will visit him every day in prison. And why not? It’s located in a trendy, popular shopping area in Paris.
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
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