News and Document archive source
copyrighted material disclaimer at bottom of page

NewsMine9-11doubts-official-story — Viewing Item


Oscar winning actress questions 911 story { January 2008 }

Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
   http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2261454,00.html

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2261454,00.html

Has France's new rose blossomed too quickly?

Two weeks ago Marion Cotillard was little known, but after her success in the Baftas and the Oscars a golden future beckons for the new darling of French cinema

Vanessa Thorpe and Peter Allen in Paris
Sunday March 2, 2008
The Observer

Not since Simone Signoret won an Academy Award for best actress almost 50 years ago in the English film Room at the Top has a French film actress been projected so swiftly into the world of international stardom. Already acknowledged for her acting skills in her own country, Marion Cotillard was suddenly set on a path which would, it seemed, see her ranking alongside Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve as one of the most widely recognised Frenchwomen in the world, soon eclipsing, more than likely, the career of her close friend Audrey Tatou.

But this weekend the star's ascent has hit its first obstacle. Cotillard has been caught on video criticising America in a frank, and even wild, tirade. Old footage has appeared on the internet showing the actress questioning everything from the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on America to the 1969 moon walk. 'I think we're lied to about a number of things,' she appears to say, singling out the Trade Towers attack in New York as an example of the US fabricating a horror story for political ends. 'We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned?' Cotillard asks. 'There was a tower - I believe it was in Spain - which burned for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed!'

Elaborating on her conspiracy theory, Cotillard even suggests the towers were an outdated 'money sucker' which would have cost so much to modernise that it was easier to destroy them.

Referring to America's achievement of putting a man on the moon in 1969, Cotillard says: 'Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered.'

The actress made her comments on Paris Première - Paris Dernière, a programme broadcast a year ago. At the time they were largely ignored, but their appearance yesterday on the magazine website marianne2.fr is likely to cause trouble.

Cotillard's confident and outlandish dress sense, along with her Gallic charm on the awards rostrum, had marked her out as an icon in the making. Her new relationship with Guillaume Canet, a fellow actor and the director of the stylish recent hit Tell No One, appeared to be sealing the deal.

It now promises, though, to be an uncomfortable journey for this 32-year-old maid of Orleans. She has, after all, an impeccably bohemian and anti-bourgeois background to live up to.

Cotillard had already appeared in English-language film roles to limited effect, acting with Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's A Good Year and before that in Tim Burton's Big Fish. But it was her Oscar-winning performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose that elevated her last month from the status of admired artist in her own country to the rarefied heights of the Hollywood A-list. The actress's rates of pay were immediately upgraded by her victory in Los Angeles, following, as it did, her success at the Baftas and the receipt of a Golden Globe for her lead role in the biopic. She is already engaged on two high-profile new projects, a Michael Mann film treatment of the life of the gangster John Dillinger, starring Johnny Depp, and a Rob Marshall remake of Federico Fellini's passionate cult hit 8½, to be called Nine

Le Figaro recently estimated her income for 2007 at just over €1 million (about £765,000), a relatively pitiful annual sum which can be multiplied by 10 after her Oscar win. She was previously rated as the third-best-paid actress in France, after Mathilde Seigner and Nathalie Baye, giving an indication of the smaller wages French film actresses accept.

Such a dramatic change of circumstance might be envied by many actresses, but Cotillard must now handle what is being called 'the Binoche effect'. Her glittering achievements in the last two months have priced her right out of the French film business, just as winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1997 did for Juliette Binoche. Her Gallic predecessor, who made her big impact on the Academy in Anthony Minghella's film The English Patient, was promptly regarded as too expensive to cast in her own land and so had to seek out the limited number of American roles suited to a continental star. Binoche is only just re-establishing her French acting credentials.

The concern in Paris cinematic circles this weekend is not just that the country may have lost a great talent, but that Cotillard could lose out in the end too. 'Laurent Gregoire [Cotillard's agent] will have his work cut out to stop a repeat of what happened to Juliette Binoche,' wrote François-Guillaume Lorrain in Le Point last week. 'Having become too expensive for the French cinema, Binoche has taken 10 years to relaunch her career.'

Before appearing in Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose (known in France as La Môme) Cotillard famously announced: 'I chose a role, not a statuette,' and she frequently tells interviewers she has no interest in prestige, and no kind of 'Anglo-Saxon ambition'. The fact several statuettes are now lined up on the 18th-century mantelpiece of her fashionable Paris home may limit her choices. Her anti-American comments, if proven accurate, may limit them still further.

Cotillard, who grew up in Orleans and has family roots in Brittany, is in Paris this weekend before she travels to Chicago to play the moll to Depp's gangster in Mann's Public Enemies. If her Hollywood career survives her outburst, the actress will still have to battle to stay in touch with the French lifestyle she loves and her green political beliefs. A fan of the countryside, she has worked as a Greenpeace spokeswoman and campaigned on environmental issues. She is known to be unhappy about the amount of flying she now has to do. Despite having a carbon-friendly Toyota Prius, she invariably travels by limousine now.

A former Greenpeace colleague said: 'Professionally Marion is happier than she has ever been in her life, but she is also very wary of many of the trappings of stardom. She would love to be able to hang out in her Paris quartier all the time, leading a gentle life with her family and friends. Others are naturally concerned that Marion may lose interest in the relatively impoverished French film industry which made her and disappear to Hollywood for ever.'

Cotillard's film career began in the 1998 film Taxi, scripted by Luc Besson. It was a hit in France but less so around the world. Her actor parents, Niseema Theillaud and Jean-Claude Cotillard, also a director, still live in Orleans and her younger twin brothers, Quentin and Guillaume, are, respectively, a San Francisco artist and a Paris-based writer.

Cotillard laughs at the English speakers who cannot pronounce, let alone spell, her surname and who confused her with Keira Knightley on the Bafta red carpet. Following the publicity surrounding her attack on America, she may find this problem recedes. And if Hollywood proves unforgiving, the actress can always fall back on her Bohemian enthusiasm for knitting and jewellery making.



Barrie zwicker doubts official 911 version { May 11 2003 }
Bowman2006 [pdf]
Bowman2006
Canadian mp reads 911 petition in parliament { June 12 2008 }
Former senator calls for independent 911 investigation { June 17 2008 }
French 911 insidejob { April 1 2002 }
Hit piece on 911 truth hunger striking teacher { May 23 2008 }
Japanese parliament member takes 911 doubts global { June 17 2008 }
Oliver stone hints more conspiritorial 911 film
Oscar winning actress questions 911 story { January 2008 }
Pentagon papers senator calls for new 911 probe
Presbyterian church publishes 911 conspiracy
Retired special forces sergeant { October 20 2001 }
United nations official wants 911 inside job probe { June 19 2008 }
Willie nelson questions official 911 story { February 5 2008 }

Files Listed: 15



Correction/submissions

CIA FOIA Archive

National Security
Archives
Support one-state solution for Israel and Palestine Tea Party bumper stickers JFK for Dummies, The Assassination made simple