Carla Bruni Biography and Wallpapers

Carla Bruni Wallpapers

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, 23 December 1967) is an Italian-born, naturalized French songwriter, singer, former model and First Lady of France. In February 2008, she married French President Nicolas Sarkozy. She holds dual Italian - French citizenship

Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, heiress to the Italian tyre 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), 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 went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.

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. Her sister is actress and movie director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.

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. 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. On 11 April 2008, a 1993 nude photograph of Bruni sold at auction for US$91,000 (£46,098) - more than 60 times the expected price

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. Carla 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."

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".

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 what she told Vanity Fair.

Bruni met recently divorced French president Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2007 at a dinner party. 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. With the marriage Bruni obtained French nationality.

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.

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. The photograph sold for $91,000. 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. 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 which they donated to Les Restos du Cœur, an organisation which provides meals to the homeless.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama in August 2008 at a Buddhist temple on a hill in Languedoc, France. Another important event for Bruni was the reception of Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to France in September 2008. 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.

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.