Marion Cotillard's 9/11 conspiracy theory

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...tillard101.xml

(Gold9472: Her comment on the moon landing reads as if she was asked her thoughts on it, rather than bring it up herself.)

By Peter Allen in Paris
Last Updated: 8:50pm GMT 01/03/2008

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.

Miss Cotillard, who earned under £1 million in 2007, could expect her Oscar success to significantly increase her earning power. She is due to start filming Public Enemies with Johnny Depp.

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Miss Cotillard suggested that the towers, planned in the early 1960s, were an outdated "money sucker" which would have cost so much to modernise that it was easier to destroy them.

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.

They were largely ignored at the time, but appeared yesterday on a French website. Miss Cotillard’s film career began in Luc Besson’s 1998 film Taxi. She is an environmental activist, who once worked as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace.

News of Miss Cotillard’s comments comes at a time when Franco-American relations appear to be thawing, following Paris’s refusal to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

President Nicolas Sarkozy insists that he is pro-American, supporting so-called Anglo-Saxon economic reforms and going on holiday to America.