Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard was facing embarrasment with her new American public last night after it emerged that she doubted the official account of the September 11 attacks. The 32-year-old French star has swept this year's best actress awards, also receiving a Bafta, Golden Globe and a César for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose...
But the actress faces a potential backlash in the US over comments she made in an interview in France. Footage which surfaced on the internet showed her questioning the New York terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 1969 moon landing.
"I think we're lied to about a number of things," she said, singling out September 11.
Referring to the two passenger jets flown into the World Trade Centre, Miss Cotillard said: "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? 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 [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."
Miss Cotillard suggested that the towers, planned in the early 1960s, were an outdated "money sucker" which would have cost so much to modernise that it was easier to destroy them.
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Turning to America's space programme, she said: "Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don't believe all they tell me, that's for sure."
Miss Cotillard, who was born and brought up in Paris, made the comments on Paris Première - Paris Dernière (Paris First - Paris Last), a programme first broadcast a year ago.
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Read the French text of Marion's comments
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Watch her Oscar acceptance speech